The average sale price was $152,716 in February, the highest on record Rockford Area Realtors membership up roughly 6% so far in 2021 ROCKFORD — When the coronavirus upended her life as a bartender last year, Dani Powers seized an opportunity to make a career switch she had long considered. Powers, 36, had spent her entire adult life working in the hospitality industry, but it was brutalized by pandemic-related shutdowns last year, stripping an estimated $57.4 million out of restaurants and bars in Rockford alone, according to city tax data. "Instead of working an eight-hour shift five days a week, now I'm working maybe a three- or four-hour shift maybe three nights a week," she said. "I didn't want to go back to being in that bind again with the restaurant industry."