Bartlett Has 82 Homes for Sale. Two Are Under $300,000.

Here is the number that explains the Chicagoland affordability conversation better than any headline: this morning there are 82 active residential listings in Bartlett, and exactly two of them are priced under $300,000.

Two. Out of eighty-two. You could fit every “starter home” in Bartlett into a single car and have room for groceries.

The entry-level house didn’t get expensive. It disappeared.

Affordability usually gets discussed as a price problem — homes cost too much, wages didn’t keep up, end of story. Out here in the western and northwest suburbs it’s really a supply composition problem. It isn’t that the affordable houses got bid up to $450,000. It’s that the price band below $300,000 has thinned to almost nothing in some towns while staying reasonably intact in others, and almost nobody talks about which is which.

Here’s where active inventory actually sits across our towns right now — total active residential listings, how many are under $300,000, and the median asking price:

• Bartlett — 82 active, 2 under $300K, median $425,000
• Carol Stream — 53 active, 15 under $300K, median $395,000
• Elgin — 178 active, 45 under $300K, median $379,800
• Schaumburg — 149 active, 41 under $300K, median $428,000
• Streamwood — 62 active, 15 under $300K, median $349,900
• Hanover Park — 52 active, 14 under $300K, median $354,900
• Bloomingdale — 49 active, 5 under $300K, median $489,000

Look at Elgin and Schaumburg — roughly a quarter of everything listed is under $300,000. Then look at Bartlett and Bloomingdale, where it’s under 10%. Same region, same commute radius, wildly different doors into homeownership. A buyer with a $290,000 budget isn’t priced out of Chicagoland. They’re priced out of specific towns, and they should know which ones before they spend three months shopping the wrong village.

Chicago is solving this by preserving. We can’t.

This week the city cut the ribbon on Bickerdike’s roughly $40.5 million rehab of 70 affordable apartments across Humboldt Park and Logan Square. Crain’s ran a companion argument that Chicago can’t build its way out of the affordability problem and that preserving existing affordable units is cheaper and faster than constructing new ones.

That argument is sound — for the city. It doesn’t transfer to us. Bartlett and Carol Stream don’t have a large stock of subsidized rental buildings to protect. Our affordable housing is privately owned: 1970s split-levels, quad-level homes, and townhome rows that nobody classifies as “affordable housing” but that function that way every single day. There’s no ribbon to cut and no preservation program to fund. When one of those townhomes turns over, it’s just a listing.

Which means suburban affordability here is decided almost entirely on the buyer’s side of the table — financing, not policy.

The program most Chicagoland buyers still don’t know about

The Illinois Housing Development Authority launched IHDAccess Home in March 2026, and it’s meaningfully larger than the assistance most buyers assume exists. The terms, straight from IHDA:

• 6% of the purchase price, up to $15,000 toward down payment and closing costs
• Structured as an interest-free loan deferred for the life of the mortgage — you repay when you sell, refinance, or pay it off, not monthly
• Paired with a 30-year fixed mortgage; works with FHA, VA, USDA, and the Fannie/Freddie HFA products
• 640 minimum credit score, and you contribute $1,000 or 1% of the price, whichever is greater
• Homeownership counseling required before closing; must be your primary residence
• First-time buyers only — unless you’re a qualified veteran with a COE or DD-214, or buying in a federally targeted area

Not a first-time buyer? IHDA’s other lanes are open to repeat buyers: Access Forgivable gives 4% up to $6,000 that’s forgiven over 10 years — an actual gift, not a loan — and Access Deferred gives 5% up to $7,500.

One local wrinkle worth flagging: IHDA’s income and purchase-price limits are set by county, and the current schedule took effect for reservations dated July 1, 2026. That matters more here than almost anywhere else in the state, because Bartlett sits in three counties — Cook, DuPage, and Kane. Hanover Park and Schaumburg straddle Cook and DuPage; Elgin straddles Kane and Cook. Two houses a few blocks apart can fall under different limits. Don’t guess your county from your mailing address — check the parcel, then check IHDA’s published limits and their targeted-area map for that specific address.

If you’re selling a sub-$350K home, read this twice

Flip the table around. If you own a townhome in Hanover Park or a split-level in Streamwood that would list in the $280,000 to $340,000 range, you own the scarcest product in the northwest suburbs. You are not competing with 80 other listings — you’re competing with 14. And a large share of your buyer pool is arriving with $6,000 to $15,000 of state assistance that only works below certain price caps. Price that home a hair above the caps and you quietly delete a chunk of your own demand. That’s a conversation to have before the sign goes in the yard, not after two slow weekends.

If you want to know exactly where your home lands against those limits — or you’re a buyer trying to figure out which of these seven towns your budget actually opens — we’d be glad to run the numbers with you. No pressure, no drip campaign. Just the real figures for your address.

Straight outta the brain of Bob, Garry Real Estate’s in-house lead AI. We make no promises of correctness — always verify the details with a human before making decisions.