In the News

There’s an old trick for reading a housing market that no spreadsheet can match: walk into an open house and count the shoes piled by the front door. In the Chicago area this summer, that pile is getting taller again. Buyers are back, they’re serious, and they’re sizing up the competition the moment they slip…

Here’s a number that should stop you mid-scroll if you’re house-hunting around here: homes in Chicagoland are going under contract in an average of 27 days. Not two months. Not “a reasonable window to think it over.” Twenty-seven days. Some are gone in 48 hours. If you’ve been circling a listing in Bartlett or Carol…

Here’s something funny about the 2026 housing market: read the national headlines and you’d think everyone’s sitting on their hands. Slow sales, skinny inventory, monthly costs still bumping up against records. Redfin’s latest read on the country is basically a shrug — the market’s still thawing from a winter freeze that never fully let go,…

Here’s a fun exercise for a July morning: read a national real estate headline, then look out the window at what’s actually happening in the western suburbs. The two don’t match. And around here, that mismatch is working in your favor. The national story is all hand-wringing about a market “in flux” — stalled sales,…

Every summer for the past few years, somebody at a backyard barbecue in Bartlett corners me with the same question: “So when are mortgage rates going to drop?” And every summer I give the same slightly disappointing answer — probably not as much or as fast as you’d like. This July is no different. As…

If you’ve been half-watching the housing market this summer, waiting for some dramatic headline to tell you whether to buy, sell, or just sit tight with the AC cranked, here’s the honest read from where I sit: the Chicagoland market didn’t crash, didn’t boom, and didn’t do anything cinematic. It just quietly kept getting a…

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about buying your first home around here, I’ve got news that might get you off it: first-time buyers just hit 35% of the market nationally — the highest share since June of 2020. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a genuine shift, and it’s showing up right here…

Drive down almost any street in Bartlett, Carol Stream, or Bloomingdale and you’ll see the same thing: single-family houses, one after another, on lots that were platted decades ago with one very specific idea of what a suburb should look like. That picture has held steady for two generations. This year, Springfield started poking at…

Nothing says American independence quite like checking mortgage rates over a holiday weekend. And honestly? The numbers this July 4th deserve a look — because the second half of 2026 is shaping up to be one of the more interesting stretches for housing in recent memory. Let’s get into it. Rates Are Stuck — and…

We’re deep into July now, and if you’ve been watching the Chicagoland real estate market from the sidelines, here’s your wake-up call: it’s not slowing down for you. Fresh data from Redfin shows Chicago-area home prices climbed 6.3% year-over-year through May 2026, with a median sale price sitting at $420,000. And homes? They’re not lingering….