DuPage Just Broke From the Pack: More Listings, Higher Prices, and a 1-in-4 Price Cut Rate

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 look like between Wheaton and Bartlett.

Redfin’s August 2026 county report put some hard numbers on it, and we checked them against our own MLS feed this morning. Here’s what’s actually going on, and what it means if you’re about to list or about to shop.

DuPage went one way, Cook went the other

According to Redfin’s August snapshot, DuPage County had 3,607 active listings, up 11.4% year over year. New listings jumped 14.3% to 1,101. Redfin noted DuPage was the only Illinois county in its report where inventory expanded rather than contracted — Cook moved the opposite direction.

That matters for us, because the Bartlett–Carol Stream–Bloomingdale corridor sits right on the county seams. Bartlett alone straddles DuPage, Cook, and Kane. Two houses a few miles apart can be living in noticeably different markets depending on which side of the line they fall on.

The demand side didn’t fade either. Pending sales in DuPage rose 16.6% to 1,085 — the strongest gain among the Illinois counties Redfin tracked — while national pending sales slipped about 1%. Closed sales rose 3.9%. So this isn’t a pile-up of unsold homes. It’s more people moving, in both directions.

The numbers that tell you who has leverage

• Median sale price: $448,499, up 4.8% (nationally: about 2.2%)
• Months of supply: 2.5, up from 2.1 a year ago — still a seller’s market, but less of one
• Median days on market: 51, up 4 days
• Sold above list: 40.3%, down 4.2 percentage points
• Sale-to-list ratio: exactly 100%, down from 100.3%

Read those together and the picture is a market that’s still tilted toward sellers but has quietly stopped rewarding sellers who guess high. Four in ten homes still sold over asking. The other six did not, and that’s the part people forget when they hear “seller’s market.”

What our own MLS data shows this morning

We pulled active residential listings from our local MLS database as of September 15. It counts a little differently than Redfin (single snapshot, residential only), so don’t expect the totals to match — but the pattern is what’s useful.

The number that jumped out: roughly one in four active listings across DuPage, Cook, and Kane is now priced below its original asking price. In DuPage it’s about 24% of active listings; Cook and Kane both run around 26%. Redfin’s own count of listings with a price cut is lower (13.7%) because it measures a narrower window — ours catches every reduction since the listing went live.

Town by town, the share of active listings that have taken at least one price cut:

• Bloomingdale: 13 of 47 (about 28%)
• Bartlett: 21 of 80 (about 26%)
• Lombard: 33 of 136 (about 24%)
• Carol Stream: 12 of 52 (about 23%)
• Wheaton: 17 of 95 (about 18%)

And for neighbors just over the line: Elgin (mostly Kane) had 57 of 180 active listings reduced — nearly a third — while Schaumburg, Streamwood, and Hanover Park, which sit mostly in Cook, landed in the mid-20s.

These are small numbers in a single town, so a handful of listings can swing a percentage. But when nearly every town lands between 20% and 30%, that’s not noise. That’s the market telling sellers the first price is being tested.

Where the competition actually is

Redfin’s price-tier breakdown (a rolling three-month window, May through July) is the most practical part of the report. Starter homes and middle-of-the-market homes posted the biggest price gains — both up 6.1% — but their above-list rates fell by more than 4 points. Meanwhile the “high” tier, roughly $500K to $650K in DuPage, got more competitive: 56.2% sold above asking, up 1.7 points, with sales volume up 4.7%.

Translation: the move-up buyer — family outgrowing a townhome in Hanover Park or Carol Stream and shopping for a four-bedroom in Bloomingdale or Wheaton — is the one still running into bidding wars. Our feed shows about 269 active DuPage residential listings in that $500K–$650K band right now, which is not a lot of homes for the busiest buyer pool in the county.

If you’re selling this fall

Price for the market you have, not the one your neighbor had in spring 2025. The listings that sit and then cut are giving buyers a reason to wait. With 51 median days on market and one in four listings reduced, a well-priced home launched in September still stands out — especially under $650K. An overpriced one blends into the reduced pile by Halloween.

Also: more new listings means more homes a buyer will compare yours against in the same Saturday of showings. Prep, photos, and pre-listing repairs matter more when you aren’t the only option on the block.

If you’re buying

You have more room than you did a year ago, but the room isn’t evenly distributed. Below $500K, look hard at listings that have already been reduced or have been on the market 45+ days — that’s where inspection contingencies and closing-cost credits are back on the table. In the $500K–$650K range, expect competition on the good ones and have your financing buttoned up before you tour.

And don’t take a county median personally. A Bartlett ranch, a Lombard bungalow, and a Wheaton colonial are three different markets that happen to share a report.

Want the numbers for your street?

County reports are a good weather map, but they won’t tell you what the house two doors down will sell for. If you’re thinking about a move this fall — or just want to know whether the listings near you are cutting or climbing — reach out to Team Goddard at Garry Real Estate. We’ll pull what’s actually active and sold around you, no pressure attached.

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.