Golf, Illinois.
Typical home $1,308,903 (+10.4% in a year). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$3,967 (+137%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $123,158 +10%
- $1,185,746$1,308,903 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $390,109 +42%
- $918,794$1,308,903 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.
- Golf$6,870
- 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 Golf, IL rose 10.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Golf, Cook County, Illinois
Golf is a village of 514 people in Cook County. Half its households earn more than $242,772 a year and half less, against $83,498 across Cook County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 99% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 1% are rented. Unemployment in Cook County was 5.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Cook County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Golf is a very small village in Cook County, home to far fewer people than most towns. Nearly everyone who lives here owns their home, and household incomes run well above the county's, as do home values. Poverty is less common than across the county, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with January highs around freezing and plenty of snow, while July brings warm days, and precipitation falls steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with many also in professional and business services, manufacturing and retail. Commutes are fairly long, and a good number of people work from home. Across Cook County, some of the largest workplaces are Chicago Public Schools, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Unemployment across the county is higher than a year ago, though the county has added jobs over the past year.
Things to do. The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is in or beside town, a museum devoted to remembrance and education. Farther afield, a longer drive takes you into Chicago, where the Art Institute of Chicago is a museum of art and the Field Museum of Natural History is a museum of natural history. Millennium Park, a garden in the city, is another longer drive away.
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- 74%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 32 mintypical commute
- 31%work from home
What people in Cook County 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 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 34 inches of snow and 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chicago Botanic Garden weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cook County
- Chicago Public Schools Dist 299School district37,732FTE
- University of Illinois ChicagoUniversity or college14,460
- University of ChicagoUniversity or college13,622
- Northwestern UniversityUniversity or college11,742
- University of Chicago HospitalsGeneral hospital9,616FTE
- Northwestern Medical GroupMds' offices9,478
- Rush University Medical CenterGeneral hospital9,416FTE
- UPSCouriers and express delivery services8,403
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 3,702 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 793,086 people in all across the county; Golf has none of its own. 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 wavesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Golf’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.
Golf home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Golf$1,308,903
- 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.
Zip codes with a Golf address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Golf — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.