In the News

If you own a home in Illinois, you already know the punchline: we pay some of the highest property taxes in the country. The Tax Foundation keeps confirming it, editorial boards keep grumbling about it, and every summer a downstate lawmaker starts collecting property tax horror stories from constituents like they’re building a case file….

If you’ve been refreshing rate trackers this week hoping for a break, I’ve got mixed news. The average 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to 6.58% for the week ending July 23 (that’s Freddie Mac’s number), up a hair from 6.55% the week before. It’s the highest we’ve seen in nearly a year. Cue the collective sigh…

For years, Chicago real estate got treated like the responsible older sibling at the party — dependable, a little dull, never the one making headlines. Meanwhile Austin, Phoenix, and Boise were doing keg stands with 30% appreciation and getting all the attention. Well, funny thing about the responsible sibling: they’re the one who still has…

If you bought a house in Bartlett or Carol Stream back in 2023 and locked in something in the 7s, you’ve probably had a browser tab open to a refinance calculator ever since. Here’s your July check-in: as of July 21, the national average 30-year fixed refinance APR is sitting at 6.77%, according to Bankrate….

Every few years, Washington passes something with “Housing” in the title, slaps a bipartisan bow on it, and everybody goes home feeling productive. So when the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared Congress last week, my first instinct was the same one you probably had: nice headline, but does it change anything for the…

Here’s something you don’t hear at a backyard barbecue in Bartlett very often: the housing market is tilting toward buyers, and almost nobody seems to have noticed. While the headlines still shout about rising prices and bidding wars, the underlying numbers are telling a quieter, more interesting story — and if you’ve been sitting on…

Here’s a number worth sitting with for a second: $495,633. That was the average residential sale price across DuPage and Cook counties for the first full week of July, according to Shaw Local’s weekly deal roundup. The average price per square foot? $251. If you’ve been telling yourself that half-a-million-dollar homes are a thing that…

There’s a quiet pattern showing up in the Chicago sales data this summer, and if you live out here in the western suburbs, you should probably know about it before your neighbor does. Here’s the setup: the North Shore has gotten expensive. Not “expensive” in the usual hand-wavy sense — Park Ridge is now pushing…

Let’s start with a number that should make every homeowner in the western suburbs sit up straight: Chicago’s detached homes hit a median price of $505,000 in June, up a remarkable 14.8% year over year. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a hot-take from a headline chaser. That’s one of the fastest appreciation rates…

If you’ve been house hunting around Bartlett or Carol Stream this summer and walked away feeling like you needed elbows and a game plan just to land a showing, you’re not imagining things. The latest numbers are in, and the Chicago-area market is sitting at a 66 out of 100 on the competitiveness scale —…