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In the News August 22, 2026 by Dave Goddard

One Illinois ZIP Code Made America’s Hottest List. It’s 15 Minutes From Here.

Realtor.com published its 2026 Hottest ZIP Codes list on August 10, and exactly one Illinois ZIP made it: 60187 — Wheaton, at No. 10. The Northeast and Midwest swept the whole top ten for the fourth straight year. The South and the West didn’t put up a single entry.

If you live around here, that ranking is probably less surprising than the reason behind it. It isn’t that Wheaton suddenly got discovered. It’s that there is almost nothing to buy.

The number that actually explains the list

Realtor.com found that nationally, for-sale inventory in June 2026 was running about 11.3% below pre-pandemic norms. That’s a modest shortfall — the kind of gap a market can absorb. But inside the ten hottest ZIP codes, the shortfall widened to 60.5%. More than five times the national gap.

That single statistic does most of the work in explaining the rest of the report. Listings in those ten ZIPs drew three to five times the views of a typical U.S. listing and sold 30 to 42 days faster. Nine of the ten saw homes go at or above asking, averaging roughly 103.8% of list — while the typical American home sold about 2.3% under list price in the first half of the year.

So we now have two housing markets running at the same time in the same country. In most of it, a buyer has room to negotiate. In a short list of established close-in suburbs, they’re competing.

Wheaton’s buyers are coming from here

Here’s the detail I found most useful for anyone selling in DuPage: 77.0% of Wheaton’s listing views came from inside the Chicago metro. That’s the highest local share of any ZIP on the list, and it means the demand is not out-of-state money or a remote-work migration story. It’s people who already live here, moving a few miles.

Compare that to New Berlin, Wisconsin (53151), which split its demand between Milwaukee at 49.6% and Chicago at 24.5% — a genuine spillover market. Wheaton isn’t that. Wheaton is Chicagoland buyers reshuffling inside Chicagoland.

Which is exactly why this matters to Carol Stream, Glen Ellyn, Bloomingdale and Bartlett. Those buyers don’t evaporate when they lose a Wheaton bidding war. They drive fifteen minutes.

What our towns look like this morning

Pulling active residential listings from the MLS as of today, here’s where inventory actually sits across our area:

  • Wheaton: 56 active listings, median list price about $615,000
  • Glen Ellyn: 59 active listings
  • Bartlett: 57 active listings, median about $415,000
  • Bloomingdale: 42 active listings, median about $505,000
  • Streamwood: 45 active listings, median about $375,000
  • Hanover Park: 42 active listings, median about $365,000
  • Carol Stream: 39 active listings, median about $300,000

Fifty-six active listings for a town of roughly 53,000 people is the whole story in one line. Wheaton didn’t get hot because of a marketing campaign. It got hot because a buyer who wants a 1970s-vintage house on a mature street within 25 miles of the Loop has a couple dozen realistic options at any given moment, and so does everyone else looking at the same thing.

Note that Wheaton and Glen Ellyn are DuPage County. Streamwood, Hanover Park and Schaumburg are Cook. Bartlett is the odd one — it straddles DuPage, Cook and Kane, which matters more for your tax bill than for your search radius.

What buyers should take from this

The report also found that buyers in the hottest ZIPs are showing up better capitalized than average: a 17.1% average down payment versus roughly 13.1% nationally, and a median credit score of 766 versus about 747. If you’re bidding in a 60187-type market with 5% down and a pre-qualification letter you got over the weekend, you are not competing on even footing. Get fully underwritten before you write, not after.

The other lever is geography. The list’s own logic — established housing stock, 10 to 20 miles from a major job center, more square footage than the metro norm — describes Bartlett and Bloomingdale about as well as it describes Wheaton. The difference is roughly $200,000 of median list price and considerably less company at the open house.

What sellers should take from it

Scarcity is real, but it’s local, and it is not a license to overprice. Wheaton’s listings sold over asking because there were three of the right house instead of thirty. If your home isn’t in the segment that’s short, the national pattern still applies — homes selling a couple percent under list, sitting longer than the headline suggests. Price to the comps in your own subdivision, not to a press release about a ZIP code down the road.

If you’re weighing a move in Bartlett, Carol Stream, Bloomingdale or anywhere else out this way and you want to know honestly whether your street is in the tight segment or the soft one, we’re happy to pull the actual numbers for you. No obligation, no pitch — just the data.

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.