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Chicago, Illinois
Real Estate News

First-person real estate news from the verified agents, lenders, and operators working Chicago. Original local reporting from KeyCrew Media, not aggregated hot takes.

Latest Chicago Real Estate News

Rising home prices are often blamed on mortgage rates. In Chicago’s western suburbs, the bigger driver is a shortage of homes for sale. Buyers there have spent roughly two years competing for a limited supply of listings, according to Chris Pequet, a broker with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty. Pequet has worked mainly in the area’s ...

When home buyers evaluate Chicago’s western suburbs, many default to a simple rule: the closer to downtown, the more expensive. But that logic misses what actually drives prices in this part of the market, according to Sean Zhu of Frog City Realty LLC. Zhu works across the western and northern Chicago suburbs. He says the ...

In a market where mortgage rates have squeezed monthly budgets, buyers on Chicago’s West Side are making a trade that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago. They are choosing homes that need work over homes that are move-in ready. A lower purchase price means a lower mortgage payment. For many buyers, picking up ...

Buyers who stretch to win competitive bids on distressed properties often discover that banks will not renegotiate once a highest-and-best offer has been accepted. As a result, the deals collapse before closing. Bank-owned homes, known as REO properties, often draw multiple competing offers because lenders price them to sell quickly. That bidding pressure can push ...

Alejandra Rodriguez
05 Oct 2026

Distress hasn’t disappeared from Chicago’s housing market. Cook County recorded more foreclosure filings than any other county in the country in the first quarter of 2026, and nationwide foreclosure filings were still running double digits higher year-over-year through the middle of the year, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. But rising foreclosure filings don’t automatically translate ...

More From Across Illinois

Original reporting from other Illinois markets on the KeyCrew network.

Alejandra Rodriguez
19 Oct 2026

A decade ago, first-time buyers in Chicago’s southwest suburbs were often younger and willing to fix up a home in exchange for a lower price. That buyer has largely disappeared. Ellen Williams is a residential agent with Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group in downtown Plainfield, Illinois. She says today’s first-time buyers are noticeably older and ...

Eden Godinez
19 Oct 2026

Some small investors in Illinois are moving away from long-term rentals. The reason isn’t weak numbers. It’s the legal risk of renting to tenants in the state. In Chicago’s far northwest suburbs, cities like Elgin and McHenry look like strong rental markets on paper. Home prices are affordable, many residents rent rather than own, and ...

Alejandra Rodriguez
18 Oct 2026

The median age of a first-time homebuyer just hit 40, according to Larry Naselli, a residential real estate agent with Baird & Warner in Crystal Lake, Illinois. That figure reflects more than high prices and elevated interest rates. It also reflects a generation reaching financial adulthood later. Many start careers later, build savings later, and ...

Featured Across KeyCrew Media

Editor-picked local real estate reporting from markets across the KeyCrew Media network.

Alejandra Rodriguez
14 Sep 2026

The gap between Houston’s residential market and its coastal neighbor shows what happens when short-term rental speculation meets a correction. Harris County, Texas, currently has roughly six months of housing inventory – enough to classify it as a balanced-to-soft market where sellers need to price carefully and present homes in strong condition. But the sharper ...

Alejandra Rodriguez
14 Sep 2026

The U.S. rental market built aggressively during the pandemic era, particularly in Sunbelt cities like Nashville, Austin, and Dallas. Now much of that new inventory, especially high-end apartments, is sitting partially empty, competing for renters whose budgets have tightened considerably since construction began. The disconnect is straightforward: developers built expensive Class A apartments in markets ...

Alejandra Rodriguez
09 Sep 2026

In most American markets, holding a property for ten or twelve years builds a cushion of equity. In Manhattan, that assumption no longer holds across large segments of the market, according to Nikolay Afanasyev, Founder & CEO of CITY SPHERE Property Group, a boutique brokerage covering Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Rising building carrying costs, ...

Steve Marcinuk
09 Sep 2026

For buyers waiting on the largest purchase of their lives, the appraisal process is one of the last black boxes in a home purchase. Turnaround time isn’t a single number; it’s the sum of scheduling, inspection, report production, quality review, and any revision cycles that follow, and thin appraiser panels and uncontrolled revision cycles are ...

Steve Marcinuk
28 Jul 2026

The company has already published over 5,000 articles in collaboration with over 1,800 market experts across all 50 states, powered by a tech-forward approach to research and reporting. MIAMI, FL – July 28, 2026: KeyCrew Media, the expert-sourced real estate news network, today unveiled KeyCrew Local, a network of local real estate news sites and ...

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