🏠The Goddard Report – Midweek Real Estate Market Update – August 12, 2026
There are 1,043 homes for sale across our 24 western-suburb towns this morning, and buyers are clearing them almost as fast as they list. Here is the whole picture — every town, plus how quickly this market is actually moving.
24-town area
active builds
5.5% is ours
Every town, one chart
Ranked by how many homes are for sale right now. The number inside each bar is the actual count — dark green for houses, light green for condos and townhomes — so you can read the split without doing any math. The last three columns show what changed since last week, since a month ago, and how many of the listings are brand-new construction.
First, the obvious one. Elgin, Schaumburg, St. Charles/Campton Hills carry the most inventory, but that is mostly a size story — they are the biggest towns in the group, so more homes are for sale there simply because more homes exist there.
96 is the dark green section — single-family houses. A house standing on its own lot, no shared walls.41 is the light green section — condos and townhomes. Homes that share at least one wall with a neighbor.137 on the right is just those two added together — every home for sale in Elgin this morning.
The two colors describe the homes, not the town. All 24 of these are single-family towns. Schaumburg is not “a condo town” because its light green section runs long this week — it only means that more of what happens to be available right now is attached. Next month the same town can look completely different. It is a snapshot of what is for sale, nothing more.
When a section is too thin to hold its own number we print it just past the end of the bar rather than drop it — Winfield reads “7 condo/TH” out to the right. Anywhere you see a bar with almost no light green, that town has very little to offer a condo or townhome buyer at the moment — which is worth knowing before you spend a Saturday looking there.
Week versus month. A town can be down for the week and still up for the month — that is normal noise, not a trend. When both columns point the same direction, that is the one worth paying attention to. Area-wide we are up 33 homes since July 15, and Bloomingdale, Elgin, Geneva, Hanover Park are building inventory on both clocks.
Only on the blog
How fast this market is really moving
Inventory alone does not tell you whether a market is hot. This is the part the social posts do not carry: what actually sold, and how. Based on 2,985 closed sales across the same 24 towns in the last 90 days.
Selling fastest
Most breathing room
What those four numbers actually mean for you
- There is about 1.0 month of homes to choose from. A normal, comfortable market has five or six months’ worth. So the house you like is a house several other people also like.
- Half of the homes that sold were spoken for within 7 days. If you wait for the weekend to go see something that listed on Tuesday, it may already be under contract.
- 68% of sellers got their asking price or more. Plan your budget around paying the list price, not around talking someone down.
- What to do about it: get a real pre-approval letter before you shop, turn on instant alerts so you hear about a house the hour it lists, and be able to go see it that same day. That is what wins here — speed and being ready, not overpaying.
- You have almost no competition. With only 1.0 month of inventory, a buyer looking in your town does not have a long list of other homes to pick from.
- A well-prepared home is going under contract in about a week. This is not a list-it-and-wait-two-months market.
- About 7 out of every 10 sellers got asking price or better — several of them got more, because more than one buyer showed up.
- What to do about it: the first weekend is the whole ballgame. Photos, condition and the right list price have to be finished before it goes live, because that is when the offers come in. Priced right, the market bids you up. Priced too high, you sit and then look stale — in a market where nothing else is sitting.
What it means this week
If you are buying
New construction is the relief valve — 138 active new builds across the area, where the price is the price and you are not bidding against six other offers. And the “most breathing room” towns above are where you get the most choice per buyer.
If you are selling
Medinah (2), Wayne (5), Itasca (14), Winfield (21) have the fewest homes on the market this week. Less competition means more eyes on your listing — and with 68% of recent sales closing at or above asking, pricing right is beating pricing high.
Thinking about a move?
Dave and Candy Goddard are full-time Chicagoland agents with Garry Real Estate. You get two agents for the price of one.
What is my home worth? Search homes for sale
Call 630-310-8315 · Text Dave 630-992-3283 · Text Candy 630-992-5477
