Market Update · September 2026

Demand Has Cooled Since July. Your Comps Don't Know That Yet.

If you pull comparable sales for a Lincoln Square single-family home today, you will see a market that looks close to euphoric — closed prices up nearly twenty percent over last year. Every one of those sales was negotiated months ago. The weekly demand data has been falling since July, and the homes sitting unsold right now are telling a noticeably different story.

What the trailing year says

Start with the comps, because that is what every seller and every appraiser will reach for. For MLS area 8004 — Lincoln Square proper — the trailing-twelve-month median closed price for a single-family residence (SFR) was $1,227,212 through August 2026, up from $1,025,000 a year earlier. That is a 19.7% year-over-year move. Lincoln Square condos closed at a $380,000 median, down slightly from $395,000, and went under contract in an average of 26 days — down from 39 a year ago. SFRs averaged 37 days, unchanged.

Nothing about those figures is wrong. They are also a rear-view mirror: each one is an average of twelve months of contracts, most of them written before this summer. They describe the market that produced your neighbor's sale. They do not describe the market your listing would enter on Saturday.

What this week says

Altos Research publishes a Market Action Index that measures buyer demand against available supply — above 30 is seller's territory, and higher means hotter. In 60625 single-family, that index has now fallen two months running: 77 in mid-July, 59 in mid-August, 52 today. It is still comfortably a seller's market. It has also lost a third of its heat in sixty days.

The unsold listings say the same thing from another direction. Active 60625 single-family listings have now been on the market an average of 102 days, up from 82 days a month ago. 38% have cut their price. Not one has raised it. When inventory is this scarce — eight active listings — and homes still sit for over three months, the constraint isn't supply. It's price.

The asking median won't rescue you either

There is a tempting number floating around this month: the median asking price for a single-family home in 60625 is now $1,181,350, against roughly $812,500 in late July. A 45% jump in under two months.

Do not price off it. There are eight active single-family listings in the entire ZIP. A handful of expensive homes coming to market moves that median enormously without a single buyer having agreed to anything. That figure reflects what a few sellers are hoping for, on a sample small enough to swing wildly — and the 102-day average and 38% price-cut rate are what happened to the last round of sellers who hoped similarly. Asking prices are aspirations. Closed sales are evidence. Neither one is this week's demand.

The cooling is broad, but not uniform

This isn't only a 60625 single-family story. Three of the four Northside segments we track cooled over the past month: 60625 condos eased from 75 to 68, 60625 SFRs from 59 to 52, and 60660 SFRs from 47 to 46. Only Edgewater condos tightened, from 50 to 51. Every segment remains well above the 30 threshold — this is a seller's market losing altitude, not a buyer's market arriving.

• 60625 / Lincoln Square area, SFRs. Median list $1,181,350 · MAI 52 · 102 days on market · 8 active listings.
• 60625 / Lincoln Square area, condos. Median list $350,000 · MAI 68 · 54 days on market · 31 active listings.
• 60660 / Edgewater, condos. Median list $254,950 · MAI 51 · 70 days on market · 58 active listings.
• 60660 / Edgewater, SFRs. Median list $1,017,500 · MAI 46 · 77 days on market · 2 active listings.

And the averages still can't price your home

One more reason the headline number won't help you. Across the Chicago metro, Homes.com put the July median sale price at $393,000, up 6.5% year over year — the fastest annual gain among the 40 largest U.S. markets. Illinois Realtors put the city of Chicago median at $425,000. Both are real. Neither is within half a million dollars of a Lincoln Square SFR.

Property type is most of that gap, and geography is the rest: the 60625 ZIP blends Lincoln Square and Ravenswood with lower-priced Albany Park and Budlong Woods, so even the ZIP median understates what a prime Lincoln Square home commands. That is why the closed Lincoln Square SFR median sits above the ZIP-wide asking median.

What to do about it

If you are selling this fall, the instruction is not "panic" — it is "price into the market you are entering, not the one your comps recorded." Those are different markets right now, and the distance between them has been widening since July. The sellers whose listings are at 102 days priced into the first one.

If you are buying, you have meaningfully more room than the headlines suggest. Thirty-eight percent of active 60625 single-family listings have already cut their price and none have raised one. That is a market where a well-reasoned offer gets a hearing.

For context: mortgage rates are hovering near 7%. We don't forecast where they go next, and you should be skeptical of anyone who does.