Twelve numbers for anyone weighing a move to Chicago, every one taken from a public agency’s own files — the city’s, Cook County’s, the CTA’s, the Park District’s, or a federal agency’s — in an analysis this site has already published — and re-checked against that analysis’s data before this page was built. They are not a verdict on the city; they are what the records say about taxes, city services, housing, transit, and the lakefront, each with the boundary its record carries. The median Chicago house valuation implied 81 percent of its 2025 sale price; most house appeals filed without a lawyer won; a graffiti request closes in under a day; buses are back to 86 percent of 2019 ridership and the ‘L’ to 65. Each entry links the full reading. This page takes no position on whether anyone should move, or where in the city anyone should live.
1. Chicago houses sold in 2025 for more than their valuations implied — the median valuation worked out to 81 percent of the sale price
Across 11,719 house sales matched to the Assessor’s mailed tax-year-2025 valuations, the median valuation implied 81 percent of what the house actually sold for, with wide differences by area, as our reading of the 2025 sales maps. The ratio describes the county’s files, not any one house.
2. Most house appeals filed without a lawyer won — 60 percent, against 39 percent of those filed with one
In the Board of Review’s tax-year-2025 decisions for Chicago houses, self-filed appeals won 14,506 of 24,373 times (60 percent) and attorney-filed appeals 20,820 of 53,569 (39 percent), by our count of the decision file. The figures are observational: they show a lawyer is not required to win, not that hiring one causes a worse result.
3. 93 percent of house parcels the Assessor turned down went on to the Board of Review — and 42 percent of those won there
Of 30,952 Chicago house parcels denied at the first appeal stage in tax year 2025, 28,784 appeared at the Board of Review too, and 12,229 of them won a reduction there, per our parcel-by-parcel match of the two files. Parcels, not people: the files do not say who filed.
4. The tax-year-2025 second-installment bill is due October 1, 2026 — 61 days past the statutory August 1
Cook County’s Treasurer lists the tax-year-2025 second-installment due date as Thursday, October 1, 2026; our late-bill ledger counts that as 61 days past the August 1 the statute names, the latest entry in a run of late years. The Treasurer’s table, not this page, is the current word.
5. 311 closes a graffiti request in under a day at the median — and an abandoned-vehicle request in about twelve
Across 793,774 timed requests created January 2024 through June 2026, graffiti removal closed in a median 0.7 day, traffic-signal outages in 0.12, potholes in 5.1, abandoned vehicles in 11.6, and garbage-cart maintenance in 14.9, per our ranking of the big 311 types. A closed request is the record’s word, not a verified repair.
6. 69,852 water-in-basement 311 requests since December 2018 — and one day, August 17, 2025, holds 3,783 of them
The city’s Water in Basement request type arrives with the storms: 5.4 percent of every such request in nearly eight years came on a single August day, and Austin leads all 77 community areas at 8,207, per our basement-flooding ledger. Requests, not verified floods; the type is for water backing up, by the city’s definition.
7. 2,756,235 potholes filled since 2018, by the patch file’s own counts — and a median of five days from request to patch this year
CDOT’s completed-patch file records 239,812 jobs and 2,756,235 potholes filled since 2018, with the median 2026 job closed five days after its request, per our patch ledger. The file records work done, never work waiting.
8. 3,852 active shared-housing registrations in all 50 wards — and 2,230 buildings that filed to bar house-sharing
The city’s house-share files run both ways: 3,852 approved registrations, every ward holding at least one, against a prohibited-buildings list 2,230 buildings long, per our house-share ledger, which also walks through the city’s own pages for checking an address. A registration is permission, not proof of an active listing.
9. Buses carry 86 percent of their 2019 riders; the ‘L’ carries 65 percent
January through May, like for like: 83,259,828 bus rides in 2026 against 96,483,105 in 2019, and 47,034,720 rail station entries against 72,018,681, per our bus-versus-train reading of the CTA files. Ridership reflects service allocation as well as demand, as the analysis notes.
10. A Chicago rideshare cost $4.21 a mile in June 2026, up from $3.81 in June 2023 — with additional charges now 35 percent of the bill
Summed on the city’s own trip files, the all-in cost per mile rose while the fare line fell; the additional-charges share of what riders paid went from 18 percent to 35 percent, per our cost-per-mile analysis. The city rounds fares and tips before publishing; the per-mile figures average over millions of trips.
11. The federal rent schedule’s median two-bedroom figure for Chicago’s core ZIP codes is $1,750 for fiscal 2026 — up 46 percent from $1,195 in 2019
HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents — a federal schedule of 40th-percentile recent-mover gross rents, not asking rents — put the median two-bedroom figure across 60 matched city ZIPs at $1,750, per our ZIP-by-ZIP reading. The schedule sets voucher payment standards; it is not a survey of listings.
12. 5 percent of lakefront beach water tests since 2021 hit the swim-advisory level — seven times as often at one beach as at another
Of 9,524 rapid-DNA tests since 2021, 473 reached the Park District’s yellow-advisory threshold, with 63rd Street highest and North Avenue lowest, 7.2 times apart, per our beach-lab reading. A flagged test is a lab result on a sampling day, not a season’s verdict.
Questions these numbers can answer
Where do these numbers come from? Each is the headline figure of a Keep Chicagoland Moving analysis built on a named public file — Cook County’s assessment, sales, and appeal records; the city’s 311, pothole, house-share, and rideshare files; CTA’s ridership files; HUD’s rent schedule; the Park District’s beach-lab results — and each entry links that analysis, where the method and limits are set out in full.
Are these current? Each number carries its own date in the linked analysis — tax year 2025 for the county figures, 2024–2026 windows for 311, January–May 2026 for transit, June 2026 for rideshare, fiscal 2026 for the rent schedule — and the public files behind them update on their own schedules; the linked pages, not this list, carry any later refresh.
Which part of Chicago do they describe? Citywide figures unless an entry says otherwise; the linked analyses break most of them down by community area or ZIP code. Differences between areas are reported there as the records show them, and nothing on this page or those pages ranks where anyone should live.
Where these numbers come from
Twelve published analyses and their committed data files, each linked in its entry; every figure on this page was re-checked against the analysis’s own aggregate file at build time, and no new data was fetched for this list. Sources by entry: the Cook County Assessor’s valuation and sales files and the Board of Review’s decision history; the Cook County Treasurer’s due-date table; the city’s 311 Service Requests, Potholes Patched, Active Shared Housing Registrations and House Share Prohibited Buildings files; CTA bus and rail ridership files; the city’s Transportation Network Providers trip files; HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents; and the Chicago Park District’s beach-lab data.
Compiled by KCM Desk from its own published analyses, rebuilt August 21, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.