Braidwood, Illinois.
Typical home $287,198 (+4.3% in a year). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$840 (+126%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $11,899 +4%
- $275,299$287,198 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $82,679 +40%
- $204,519$287,198 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Braidwood$1,507
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Braidwood, IL rose 4.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Braidwood, Will County, Illinois
Braidwood is a city of 6,194 people in Will County. Half its households earn more than $82,202 a year and half less, against $109,984 across Will County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 87% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 13% are rented. Unemployment in Will County was 5.1% in August 2026, and the county had 1.6% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in transport and warehouses, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Braidwood is a small city in Will County where nearly everyone owns the home they live in. The population is older than in many towns, and household incomes run below the county's, though fewer households live below the poverty line than that might suggest. Winters are cold, with a fair amount of snow, and summers turn warm.
Work. Many residents work in transport, warehouses and utilities, or in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops and the building trades also employing a good number. Across Will County, some of the largest workplaces are Plainfield Schools, Amazon and Silver Cross Hospital. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a fairly long one.
Things to do. The Kankakee River is a short drive away, as is Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a protected area of open grassland. Heidecke Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area, also a protected area, is another short drive. For something louder, Chicagoland Speedway, a race track, is a longer drive.
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- 2,584households
- 18%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 29 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Will County had 267,868 jobs in 2025, 1.6% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 17°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 65°. About 18 inches of snow and 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Channahon Dresden Isl Dam weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Will County
- Plainfield SD 202School district3,542FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage3,529
- Valley View CUSD 365USchool district2,615FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage2,151
- Silver Cross HospitalGeneral hospital2,086FTE
- Governors State UniversityUniversity or college1,443
- AmazonCouriers and express delivery services1,390
- Joliet Junior CollegeTwo-year college1,375
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 760 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 117,604 people in all across the county; Braidwood has two of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Braidwood’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Will County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Braidwood home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Braidwood$287,198
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Braidwood13
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Braidwood6
Zip codes with a Braidwood address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Braidwood — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.