Oak Forest, Illinois.
Typical home $301,258 (+6.1% in a year), asking rent $2,140 . Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$861 (+119%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $17,388 +6%
- $283,870$301,258 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $62,211 +26%
- $239,047$301,258 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.
- Oak Forest$1,581
- 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 Oak Forest, IL rose 6.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Oak Forest, Cook County, Illinois
Oak Forest is a city of 27,478 people in Cook County. Half its households earn more than $91,990 a year and half less, against $83,498 across Cook County; 6% of its people live below the poverty line. 82% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 18% are rented. Unemployment in Oak Forest 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 schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Oak Forest is a city in Cook County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and more so than across the county as a whole. Household incomes run above the county's, and fewer residents live below the poverty line than you might expect in a place this close to Chicago. Residents tend to be somewhat older than the typical American, and a four-year degree is held by a minority of adults. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer highs, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, professional and business services, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in Oak Forest are Help At Home, a non-medical homemaker's service for elderly or disabled people, the Southwest Cook Coop Spec Ed Schools district, and Forest Ridge Schools. The commute is long for many, and only a small share of people work from home. Unemployment has edged up a little over the past year.
Things to do. For a day out, the Art Institute of Chicago is the best known of the nearby places, a large art museum a longer drive away. Millennium Park is a downtown garden and public space, and the Field Museum of Natural History is another museum worth the trip. Each of these is a longer drive from town.
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- 10,355households
- 31%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 32 mintypical commute
- 10%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 31° and lows near 15°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 64°. About 28 inches of snow and 42 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Park Forest weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Oak Forest
- Help At HomeHomemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical849
- Southwest Cook Coop Spec Ed SchoolsSchool district222FTE
- Forest Ridge SD 142School district178FTE
- Jewel Food StoresSupermarkets and other grocery stores176
- Frito-LayConfectionery merchant wholesalers132
- Welsch Ready MixCentral-mixed concrete manufacturing100
- Fierke Education CenterSchools, elementary60
- Frito LAYConfectionery merchant wholesalers44
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 10 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,476 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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 in parts of Oak ForestRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Oak Forest’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 Cook County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Oak Forest home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Oak Forest$301,258
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Oak Forest listings, and the typical home goes pending in 10 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.
- Oak Forest26.88%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Oak Forest10
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Oak Forest66
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Oak Forest32
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Oak Forest$306,903
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Oak Forest101.13%
Zip codes with a Oak Forest address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Oak Forest — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.