CHAMPAIGN — It took five months, but Jennifer Kam finally found the house she wanted in Champaign-Urbana.

Kam, a new assistant professor in the University of Illinois Department of Communications, came from Columbus, Ohio, where she was on the Ohio State faculty.

"I looked at 20 to 25 houses in person" and many more online, Kam said.

She visited 15 houses on the first of three trips to Champaign-Urbana. By the time the third trip rolled around, she was about to give up and rent.

But a Champaign resident who shared a mutual friend with Kam clued her in to a nearby house that had just gone on the market.

"I loved it, and I made an offer on it," Kam said.

The house she chose was a 65-year-old house in west central Champaign, just west of Prospect Avenue.

"I was really looking for an older home with charm in a mature neighborhood," Kam said. "I wanted something that was already updated. All the old windows in this house had been changed to energy-efficient windows, and the kitchen had granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances."

Kam had plenty of company in buying a home last month. A total of 254 home sales closed in July, according to the Champaign County Association of Realtors' Multiple Listing Service.

That was up 45 percent from the 175 homes sold in July 2010, the association said.

The July increase in home sales was a departure from March, April, May and June, when sales were down from the same month a year ago.

One reason: Many buyers in 2010 completed their transactions in the spring, before the eligibility for home buyer tax credits expired. When July 2010 arrived, many would-be buyers had already made their purchases.

"We call that the post-tax credit hangover," said Max Mitchell, the association's president.

But even with the strong upturn this July, "the market continues to be fragile," Mitchell said.

Sellers who want their homes sold "most definitely are trimming the price to attract that buyer," he said.

They are also eliminating perceived negatives — such as weird wall colors and odd floor plans — that may not appeal to buyers.

"Those negatives in a soft market are greatly magnified," Mitchell said. "If you've got something that isn't pristine, it makes it very difficult to compete in today's market."

Mitchell said buyers are taking a lot longer to make a decision.

"They feel there's no urgency in getting into a house as quickly as they possibly can," he said. "There's a good supply."

As Mitchell has repeatedly said this year, now is a good time to buy because mortgage rates are low, prices are down and the inventory of homes is great.

Mitchell said the number of listings topped 2,100 in July, and stood at 2,089 earlier this week.

He said he expects many homes to be withdrawn from the market as owners who hoped to sell their properties instead rent them to folks who moved here for jobs or grad school.

Of the nearly 2,100 properties listed with the Multiple Listing Service this week, the average had been listed for 149 days, or nearly five months. The median price listing was $149,999.

The listing service includes single-family homes in Champaign County and parts of Douglas and Piatt counties.

Champaign-Urbana listings made up slightly more than half those listings.

The average time on the market for Champaign-Urbana listings was 162 days, and the median price listed was $139,500, Mitchell said.

For the first seven months of this year, 1,393 home sales had closed, down 4 percent from the 1,450 closings in the first seven months of 2010.

Sales for the first seven months of this year totaled $188.9 million, down almost 12 percent from the $213.7 million for the same months last year.

The average selling price in July was $149,187, up from $138,765 in June, but down from the July 2010 average of $164,647.