Guides for anyone relocating to Chicago or its suburbs: what homes cost, how buying works here, and the practical questions every move raises. Researched from local data and sources, and updated as the answers change.
The highest two-bedroom value on HUD’s FY2026 rent schedule for Chicago’s core ZIPs is a 14-way tie at $2,670 — the cap’s work. The lowest is $1,290, in 60609. Schedule values by ZIP, from the agency’s own files.
The city's own land inventory: 12,110 parcels marked owned, a fifth of the located ones in Englewood and West Englewood alone. Sales fell from 259 in 2024 to 195 in 2025; just 874 parcels are marked Offered. Among 2023-and-later sales with both dates, the median parcel had been city property for 23.4 years.
Chicago issued wrecking permits at 4,482 sites in 2018-2022. We matched every one against the city's new-construction permits by parcel number and address: 42.8 percent show a rebuild permit. Logan Square, 187 of 222. West Englewood, 1 of 287. West Pullman, 0 of 137. Where a rebuild comes, the median gap is 50 days.
HUD publishes a two-bedroom rent figure for every Chicago ZIP - the schedule Section 8 payment standards are built from. The median is up 46 percent since 2019, the floor is in Back of the Yards, and fourteen ZIPs share a $2,670 ceiling set by a verified federal cap.
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.
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.
Chicago's assessment roll opened at $49.46 billion and closed $3.85 billion lighter. Commercial property holds 39 percent of the city's assessed value and collected 86 percent of the reductions. Against its own value it was cut 17.0 percent; residential 1.3. Why that is not the whole story.
We read every Cook County Board of Review decision on a Chicago house for the 2025 tax year. Appeals filed without an attorney won 59.5% of the time; appeals filed with one won 38.9%. The gap holds in every price bracket and all five years we checked.
We put the federal mortgage record next to Cook County's deed record for 2025. In West Englewood, 100 homes sold at or under $100,000 and four small purchase mortgages were written. What that gap does and doesn't tell you.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11 without the president's signature. We checked its four Chicago-relevant sections against 241,653 deeds, the city's permit file, and its inspection record. The famous investor cap has the least to grip here.
