Forest Lake, Illinois.
Typical home $470,683 (+7.1% in a year). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,346 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $31,290 +7%
- $439,392$470,683 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $115,724 +33%
- $354,959$470,683 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.
- Forest Lake$2,470
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Forest Lake, IL rose 7.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Forest Lake, Lake County, Illinois
Forest Lake, in Lake County, had 1,784 people in the 2020 census. Half its households earn more than $96,250 a year and half less, against $110,416 across Lake County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 96% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 4% are rented. Unemployment in Lake County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lake County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Forest Lake is a small community in Lake County, Illinois, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Household incomes run below the county's, and relatively few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a good deal of snow, and summers turn warm in July, with rain and melted snow spread across the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, professional and business services, and shops also employing sizable numbers. Across Lake County, some of the largest workplaces are AbbVie, Abbott and Discover Financial Services. Commutes are fairly long, and only a few people work from home.
Things to do. Most of the well-known places nearby are a longer drive away. They include the Chicago Botanic Garden, a botanical garden, and Six Flags Great America, an amusement park. Brookfield Zoo is another longer drive, and Wrigley Field, a stadium, is also a longer drive away.
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- 4%below the poverty line
- 33 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What people in Lake County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lake County had 325,826 jobs in 2025, 1.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 29° and lows near 14°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 62°. About 43 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Mundelein Wsw weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lake County
- AbbVie (Abbott Park )Pharmaceutical preparations manufacturing8,297
- AbbVie - US FieldOffice administration services6,857
- AbbottSurgical and medical instrument manufacturing4,909
- Discover Financial ServicesOffice administration services4,822
- AbbVie (Mettawa)Office administration services3,503
- CDWComputer peripheral equipment merchant wholesalers3,224
- AbbVie (North Chicago)Pharmaceutical preparations manufacturing3,218
- Zebra Technologies Corporation (IL151)Computer terminals manufacturing2,548
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 579 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 117,782 people in all across the county; Forest Lake has none of its own. 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
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Forest Lake’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 Lake County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Forest Lake home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Forest Lake$470,683
- 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.
- Forest Lake6
Zip codes with a Forest Lake address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Forest Lake — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.