Saint Charles, Illinois.
Typical home $477,257 (+6.4% in a year), asking rent $1,956 (+3.4%). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,424 (+132%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $28,616 +6%
- $448,641$477,257 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $137,113 +40%
- $340,144$477,257 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.
- Saint Charles$2,505
- 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 Saint Charles, IL rose 6.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Saint Charles, IL rose 3.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Saint Charles runs $1,958/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $3,914 a month against $1,956 rent: a $2,505 mortgage payment, plus $898 property tax and $511 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Saint Charles
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$3,914
- Renting$1,956
- Mortgage only$2,505
Property tax · $898/mo 2.26% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Kane County, IL
Insurance & upkeep · $511/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 Saint Charles, Kane County, Illinois
Saint Charles is a city of 33,081 people in Kane County. Half its households earn more than $114,300 a year and half less, against $103,163 across Kane County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 70% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 30% are rented. Unemployment in Saint Charles was 3.4% in August 2026, and Kane County had 0.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
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. Saint Charles is a city on the Fox River in Kane County, home to a good many people. Residents are somewhat older than in many places, most homes are lived in by their owners, and incomes run above the county's, with few households living below the poverty line. A higher share of adults hold a four-year degree than in most places. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July is the warmest and summers are pleasantly warm, and precipitation is steady through the year.
Work. Schools, hospitals and social care employ the most residents, followed by restaurants, hotels and entertainment, professional and business services, and manufacturing. Among the largest workplaces in Saint Charles are the St Charles school district, Valley Fire Protection Systems and Nidec Mobility of America. Unemployment is lower than it was a year ago, though across Kane County there are slightly fewer jobs than the year before. A typical commute is a fairly short drive, and a good number of residents work from home.
Things to do. In or beside town, Pottawatomie Park offers gardens and open space by the river, and the Arcada Theater is a historic theatre for live shows. A short drive away, the Fox River Trolley Museum gives rides on vintage electric trolley cars. For a longer outing, the Morton Arboretum, a large botanical garden, and Brookfield Zoo are both a longer drive away.
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- 13,161households
- 52%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 15%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kane County had 213,552 jobs in 2025, 0.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 33 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the West Chicago Dupage Airport weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Saint Charles
- St Charles CUSD 303School district1,324FTE
- Nationwide Organ Recovery Transport AllianceShuttle services1,117
- Valley Fire Protection SystemsSprinkler system, building, installation1,037
- AJR EnterprisesRestraints, patient, manufacturing789
- Nidec Mobility of AmericaPower window and door lock systems, automotive, truck, and bus, manufacturing452
- St. Charles Park District429
- St. Charles - Kirk RoadAll printing operations including digital printing328
- City of St. CharlesGeneral services departments, government305
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 65 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 10,175 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 wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Inland floodingrelatively high in parts of Saint CharlesRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Saint Charles’ 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 Kane County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Saint Charles home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Saint Charles$477,257
- 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 Saint Charles listings, and the typical home goes pending in 17 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Saint Charles28.08%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Saint Charles17
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Saint Charles118
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Saint Charles49
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Saint Charles$490,471
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Saint Charles101.73%
Zip codes with a Saint Charles address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Saint Charles — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.