In the News

A higher property assessment can feel like a bill arriving before breakfast, but the two are not the same thing. An assessment is the value the county uses in the tax formula; the actual bill comes later, after local taxing bodies set levies and rates, exemptions are applied, and county calculations are finished. That distinction…

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…

The median homeowner planning a project this year budgeted $15,000. Last year that number was $20,000. Same ambitions, a quarter less money. That’s the finding buried in the 2026 Houzz & Home study, which also pegged the share of homeowners planning work at roughly half — down a couple of points from 2025. A shrinking…

Drive Route 59 through Bartlett and it’s easy to believe the builders are everywhere. The framing crews, the model-home flags, the fresh sod laid in perfect rectangles. But zoom out to the whole country and the new-construction story sounds a lot quieter than it looks from the car window. According to a recent Zillow analysis,…

Last Saturday, downtown Elgin threw a party. La Fiesta de Elgin kicked off with an 11 a.m. car caravan through downtown, then took over Festival Park from 4:30 to 10 p.m. with Los K Bros, Sonora Tropicana, La Original Banda El Limón and Mariachi Sirenas, a towering Angel of Independence, a piñata smash, El Grito,…

Here’s a sentence that shouldn’t be true: DuPage County added 11% more homes for sale over the past year and prices still went up nearly 5%. Usually more supply means softer prices. In DuPage, buyers and sellers both showed up at once — and that tells you a lot about what the next few months…

Somewhere in Bartlett right now, a homeowner is standing in a 2004 kitchen, staring at oak cabinets and doing math. They’ve got plenty of equity. They don’t want to touch their mortgage. And every bank they talk to asks the same question: do you want a home equity loan or a HELOC? Most people pick…

Here’s a number worth sitting with: this July, the Thornton reservoir, one of the giant stormwater holding tanks under the Chicago area, hit 94% of its 7.4-billion-gallon capacity. That’s the fullest it has ever been. Its sibling, the McCook reservoir, filled up seven times this summer. According to City Bureau’s reporting, McCook had only hit…

There is a state program that will hand an Illinois homebuyer up to $15,000 toward a down payment, charge zero interest on it, and not ask for a single monthly payment until the day that buyer sells, refinances, or pays the mortgage off. It has existed for years. It works in every one of Illinois’…

There is a moment in every home inspection where the inspector goes quiet, crouches down next to the electrical panel, and takes a photo. Not two photos. One, very deliberate photo. If you are the buyer standing behind them, your stomach drops. If you are the seller, you are about to find out something about…