National housing forecasts flipped toward flat in June. Chicago's recorded house sales, compared over matched January-April windows, ran 23% ahead of last year with the median up 5.9% - and we show exactly where recording lag stops the comparison.
We read all 856 ADU-related building permits since Chicago's pilot began and counted conservatively: 201 ADU permits in five-plus years, two-thirds of them in five North Side areas. The citywide expansion went live in April 2026 - this count is its baseline.
We matched every tax-year-2025 Chicago house appeal across both stages, parcel by parcel. The Assessor granted no reduction to five in six parcels that appealed; 93% of those later appeared at the Board of Review, and 42.5% received the reduction there. The 2026 appeal season opened July 27.
We matched 11,854 arms-length 2025 Chicago house sales to their tax-year-2025 valuations. The citywide median valuation implies 81% of what buyers paid; the gap is widest on the South Side, where the 2027 reassessment has the most ground to remeasure.
We mapped all 77,942 Chicago house appeals from tax year 2025 against 446,354 house parcels. Filing runs about 12 times higher on the North Side lakefront than on the Southwest and Southeast Sides - and the low-filing areas win more often when they file.
Cook County's last two property tax deadlines ran late, and the county says the next will too. CPS says it is short $250 million; the Treasurer's office says at most $80 million. Either way, the schools are borrowing while they wait.
The flames took 30 hours; deciding who could rebuild took three years. The 1872 march on the Common Council, the businessmen's relief ledger, the fire-limits compromise, and the class map it drew.
The Great Chicago Fire, mapped: how it crossed the river twice, the 30-hour timeline, the disputed toll, the deadlier fire the same night, and where it survives in daily Chicago.
Ten Chicago bars licensed to serve until 4 a.m., every one a short walk from the 24-hour Red Line. Verified against city licence records and each bar’s own posted hours, with the ones that shut at two flagged.
The Census Bureau put April new-home sales 6.2 percent below March, and printed a margin of error of 12.8 beside it. By the agency's own test neither that change nor the year-over-year one is statistically significant. Chicago's deed and permit records are counts rather than estimates: median prices up 18 to 29 percent off their 2023 floor, permits at a five-year high, sales up 22 percent on a like-for-like January-to-April window. Plus the 59 percent collapse we nearly published, and why it was an artifact.
