Chicago, Illinois.
Typical home $334,108 (+5.6% in a year), asking rent $2,311 (+5.7%). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$793 (+82%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $17,802 +6%
- $316,306$334,108 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $40,012 +14%
- $294,096$334,108 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.
- Chicago$1,754
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 27 years.
Typical home values in Chicago, IL rose 5.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Chicago, IL rose 5.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Chicago runs $331/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $519 in Oct 2023.
That is $2,643 a month against $2,311 rent: a $1,754 mortgage payment, plus $531 property tax and $358 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Chicago
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,643
- Renting$2,311
- Mortgage only$1,754
Property tax · $531/mo 1.91% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Cook County, IL
Insurance & upkeep · $358/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois
Chicago is a city of 2,746,388 people in Cook County. Half its households earn more than $77,902 a year and half less, against $83,498 across Cook County; 17% of its people live below the poverty line. 46% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 54% are rented. Unemployment in Chicago was 6.0% in August 2026, and Cook County had 1.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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. Chicago is the largest city in Illinois and one of the largest in the country, a place where people live close together along the shore of Lake Michigan. Residents are younger than in many American communities, and more households rent their homes than across the rest of Cook County. Incomes run a little below the county's, and a larger share of people live in poverty. Winters are cold, with January highs hovering around freezing, while summers turn warm by July.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, or in banks, insurance and property. Among the biggest workplaces in the city are Chicago Public Schools, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Unemployment is higher than it was a year ago, though across Cook County there are slightly more jobs than there were the year before. Many adults hold a four-year degree, and a good number of people now work from home.
Things to do. A short drive away, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the best known museums in the city, and Millennium Park is a garden and public space that draws visitors downtown. Sports fans can head to Wrigley Field, a stadium a short drive away, while Rate Field sits in or beside town. The Chicago River, also a short drive away, runs through the middle of it all.
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- 1,160,205households
- 44%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 33 mintypical commute
- 21%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cook County had 2,594,810 jobs in 2025, 1.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 67°.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chicago Northerly Is weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chicago
- Chicago Public Schools Dist 299School district37,732FTE
- University of Illinois ChicagoUniversity or college14,460
- University of ChicagoUniversity or college13,622
- University of Chicago HospitalsGeneral hospital9,616FTE
- Northwestern Medical GroupMds' offices9,478
- Northwestern Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital6,854FTE
- Southwest AirlinesScheduled passenger air transportation5,923
- Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's HOSChildren's hospital5,921FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 1,243 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 376,406 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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 wavesVery high
- Heat 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 Chicago’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Cook County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Chicago home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chicago$334,108
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Chicago listings, and the typical home goes pending in 15 days — the market is heating up.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Chicago23.28%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Chicago15
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chicago5,483
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Chicago1,945
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Chicago$370,653
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Chicago101.55%
Zip codes with a Chicago address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chicago — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Chicago
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60629 | Chicago | 108,324 | $1,404 | $273,942 |
| 60618 | Chicago | 91,901 | $2,240 | $586,022 |
| 60632 | Chicago | 89,107 | $1,551 | $288,846 |
| 60647 | Chicago | 84,749 | $2,335 | $583,612 |
| 60639 | Chicago | 84,240 | $1,740 | $334,063 |
| 60623 | Chicago | 81,277 | $1,581 | $227,958 |
| 60608 | Chicago | 80,737 | $1,914 | $367,513 |
| 60625 | Chicago | 76,760 | $1,969 | $424,607 |
| 60617 | Chicago | 74,790 | $1,497 | $180,176 |
| 60634 | Chicago | 73,885 | $1,951 | $379,235 |
| 60657 | Chicago | 71,904 | $2,480 | $546,908 |
| 60614 | Chicago | 70,693 | $2,869 | $682,500 |
| 60641 | Chicago | 68,894 | $1,820 | $418,327 |
| 60640 | Chicago | 65,445 | $1,983 | $373,521 |
| 60620 | Chicago | 64,871 | $1,305 | $182,454 |
| 60651 | Chicago | 63,335 | $1,751 | $284,370 |
| 60609 | Chicago | 62,028 | $1,642 | $263,163 |
| 60628 | Chicago | 60,431 | $1,725 | $147,955 |
| 60619 | Chicago | 59,503 | $1,335 | $175,199 |
| 60638 | Chicago | 57,074 | $1,577 | $327,129 |
| 60630 | Chicago | 55,486 | $1,877 | $423,247 |
| 60622 | Chicago | 54,609 | $2,534 | $660,406 |
| 60616 | Chicago | 54,308 | $1,857 | $337,788 |
| 60637 | Chicago | 52,721 | $1,757 | $244,855 |
| 60613 | Chicago | 52,244 | $2,257 | $361,540 |
| 60626 | Chicago | 49,662 | $1,720 | $270,021 |
| 60645 | Chicago | 48,208 | $1,897 | $318,171 |
| 60649 | Chicago | 48,056 | $1,281 | $143,026 |
| 60644 | Chicago | 47,210 | $1,312 | $220,953 |
| 60643 | Chicago | 45,942 | $2,118 | $237,116 |
| 60610 | Chicago | 44,883 | $2,905 | $395,014 |
| 60615 | Chicago | 42,975 | $1,855 | $251,090 |
| 60660 | Chicago | 42,724 | $1,900 | $305,306 |
| 60659 | Chicago | 41,728 | $1,752 | $369,718 |
| 60652 | Chicago | 41,074 | $2,553 | $276,016 |
| 60611 | Chicago | 37,705 | $2,956 | $361,427 |
| 60605 | Chicago | 36,210 | $2,756 | $343,490 |
| 60612 | Chicago | 35,744 | $2,328 | $380,092 |
| 60624 | Chicago | 35,263 | $1,662 | $229,782 |
| 60653 | Chicago | 33,383 | $2,272 | $331,511 |
| 60607 | Chicago | 32,392 | $2,975 | $447,876 |
| 60636 | Chicago | 32,198 | $1,447 | $142,506 |
| 60631 | Chicago | 30,924 | $1,807 | $461,054 |
| 60656 | Chicago | 29,538 | $1,611 | $390,112 |
| 60646 | Chicago | 28,780 | $1,908 | $559,541 |
| 60655 | Chicago | 28,434 | $1,895 | $335,294 |
| 60621 | Chicago | 28,301 | $1,625 | $128,484 |
| 60654 | Chicago | 25,755 | $2,879 | $382,667 |
| 60642 | Chicago | 21,789 | $2,712 | $580,122 |
| 60601 | Chicago | 15,235 | $3,042 | $389,068 |
| 60633 | Chicago | 12,474 | $1,688 | $194,020 |
| 60661 | Chicago | 11,398 | $2,607 | $349,059 |
| 60606 | Chicago | 3,840 | $2,794 | $334,437 |
| 60602 | Chicago | 1,480 | $2,438 | $296,968 |
| 60603 | Chicago | 1,298 | $2,382 | $344,576 |
| 60604 | Chicago | 616 | — | $329,485 |