Cicero, Illinois.
Typical home $278,173 (+5.2% in a year), asking rent $1,322 (+2.2%). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$796 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,659 +5%
- $264,514$278,173 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $58,600 +27%
- $219,573$278,173 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.
- Cicero$1,460
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Cicero, IL rose 5.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Cicero, IL rose 2.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Cicero runs $878/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $2,200 a month against $1,322 rent: a $1,460 mortgage payment, plus $442 property tax and $298 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Cicero
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$2,200
- Renting$1,322
- Mortgage only$1,460
Property tax · $442/mo 1.91% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Cook County, IL
Insurance & upkeep · $298/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 Cicero, Cook County, Illinois
Cicero is a town of 85,268 people in Cook County. Half its households earn more than $70,842 a year and half less, against $83,498 across Cook County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 55% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 45% are rented. Unemployment in Cicero was 4.8% in August 2026, and Cook County had 1.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in manufacturing, 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. Cicero is a town just west of Chicago, home to a young community with a median age well below what is common across much of the country. Incomes run below the county's, and a smaller share of adults hold a four-year degree than in many places. Homes are more often lived in by their owners than rented, though renting is common too.
Work. Residents work mostly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, and in professional and business services. The largest workplaces in Cicero include the Cicero school district, the J S Morton high school district and Bimbo Bakeries USA. Unemployment has edged up over the past year, and the typical commute is a fairly long one, with few people working from home.
Things to do. Some of the area's best-known sights are a short drive away, including the Art Institute of Chicago, a museum, and Millennium Park, a garden. Sports fans can reach the United Center, a stadium, just as easily. Winters are cold and snowy, with summers that turn warm, so many outings are best planned for the milder seasons.
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- 24,432households
- 11%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 29 mintypical commute
- 6%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 33° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 68°. About 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chicago Midway Airport weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cicero
- Cicero SD 99School district1,599FTE
- J S Morton HSD 201School district673FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters523
- Bimbo Bakeries USACommercial bakeries397
- Morton CollegeTwo-year college363
- Unity Jr. High School363
- United Scrap MetalMetal scrap and waste merchant wholesalers360
- AmazonCouriers and express delivery services306
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 44 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,344 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) 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 wavesVery high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively 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 Cicero’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.
Cicero home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cicero$278,173
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Cicero listings — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
- Cicero23.19%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cicero43
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cicero15
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Cicero address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cicero — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.