Market Update · July 2026

What "the Chicago Market" Actually Means on Your Block

The headlines are easy to find: Chicago home prices are up more than 6% over last year, and the typical home sells in about seven weeks. Both are true — and neither tells you much about what to do with your home. Zoom into just two Northside ZIP codes and the single "Chicago market" splinters into four that behave nothing alike.

The citywide headline

Across the city, the median sale price has been running near $420,000, up about 6.3% from a year ago, with homes going under contract in roughly 47 days. Inventory is still tight and the balance of the year has favored sellers. That's a fine summary for a news segment. It's a poor basis for pricing a specific house — or deciding whether to jump on a specific condo.

Two ZIP codes, four markets

Here's a snapshot from the week of July 20, drawn from our real-time Altos Research data — the same weekly tracking built by Compass Chief Economist Mike Simonsen. These are ZIP-level figures; keep in mind a ZIP is itself an average that blends several neighborhoods. Watch how far the four segments diverge:

• 60625 houses. Median list around $812,500, with demand strongly outrunning supply and only about 10 houses on the market. A firm seller's market — though this ZIP also spans Albany Park and Budlong Woods, which pull the median well below what Lincoln Square itself commands (more on that below).
• 60625 condos. Median list near $300,000 and moving fast — around 36 days on market. Still clearly a seller's market, just at a very different price point.
• Edgewater (60660) condos. Median list about $282,000 with roughly 52 units available — a deep, active condo market where buyers have real choice, and one that's been heating up.
• Edgewater (60660) houses. A thin, high-priced sliver — only a couple of single-family listings at any given time, so a single sale swings the "average" wildly.

Why the average misleads

Three forces are hiding inside that citywide number. The first is property type. The 60625 ZIP skews toward single-family houses; Edgewater, block for block, trades as a condo market — 50-plus condos on the market against a literal handful of houses. Blend them and you describe a place that doesn't exist. The second is demand pressure. We track it with Altos's Market Action Index, a simple gauge of buyer demand against available supply: above 30 is seller's territory, and higher means hotter. Right now 60625 sits in the low 80s while Edgewater's condos sit in the mid 50s. Both are seller's markets — but a seller in the low 80s and a seller in the mid 50s should not price, prep, or negotiate the same way. The third is geography. Even a ZIP code is a blend: 60625 alone spans Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Albany Park, and Budlong Woods, whose prices differ enough that the ZIP median understates what a prime Lincoln Square or Ravenswood home commands. The only way to see that clearly is to go below the ZIP — to the actual neighborhood, and the actual block.

Go below the ZIP: Lincoln Square itself

Pull closed sales straight from the MLS for the Lincoln Square neighborhood alone — not the whole ZIP — and the picture sharpens. Over the trailing twelve months, the median sale price for a detached single-family home in Lincoln Square is roughly $1.1 million, with homes averaging about 38 days on market. Lincoln Square condos run a median sale price near $375,000 and about 30 days to contract. Set that $1.1M against the $812,500 ZIP-wide asking median and you can see exactly how much Albany Park and Budlong Woods drag the 60625 figure down — and why a Lincoln Square seller who prices off the ZIP average is leaving real money on the table.

What it means for you

If you're selling a house in Lincoln Square or Ravenswood, demand is on your side — but "hot market" is not a pricing strategy, and buyers still punish an overreach. If you're buying an Edgewater condo, you have more leverage and more choice than the citywide story suggests. And if you own the rare Edgewater single-family home, the "comps" that show up in an automated estimate are especially unreliable — there simply aren't enough of them. In every one of these cases, the right move comes from the market your address sits in, not the one on the evening news.