Buying a Home in the Chicago Area: The City's Two-Flats and Bungalows, the Collar Counties and What Is Being Built

Stand at the corner of State and Madison in the Loop and you are standing on zero. Every address in Chicago counts outward from that corner, 800 numbers to the mile and eight blocks to the mile. Odd numbers are on the south and east sides of a street, and even numbers on the north and west (WTTW News, January 23, 2023). So 800 North State Street is one mile north of Madison, and a Chicagoan who has never seen your block can still tell you roughly where it is. The count changes between Madison and 31st Street, where Roosevelt Road, once 12th Street, is one mile south and Cermak Road, once 22nd Street, is two miles south. After 31st the eight-blocks-to-the-mile pattern comes back and runs to the city limit at 138th Street.

I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in Illinois through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I wrote this page for anyone thinking about buying a home somewhere on the Illinois side of the Chicago area. A home buyer in the Chicago area is choosing among the city's neighborhoods of two-flats, bungalows and greystones, suburban Cook County, the collar counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will, and outer Kendall, DeKalb and Grundy counties. I start with the words you will meet in listings, then the city, then the suburbs county by county. After that come the roads and trains, the schools, the hospitals and the employers, and then the homework worth doing on any single address before you compare it with another. The facts below come from public sources, cited where they matter most, and they were checked in September 2026.

What are a two-flat, a bungalow, a greystone and a coach house?

Chicago's housing has its own vocabulary. A two-flat is a two-unit building, and most of them were built between 1900 and 1920. Two- to four-unit buildings make up 27% of the city's housing stock (Chicago Architecture Center; DePaul Institute for Housing Studies). So a question about a rental unit under the same roof comes up here far more often than in a market of detached homes.

The Bungalow Belt is the band of bungalow neighborhoods curving around the west side of the city, built from the 1910s to 1930. About one third of all the city's single-family homes are bungalows (Moss Architecture). A greystone is a building faced in Indiana limestone, built mostly from 1890 to 1915. The word describes the material rather than the floor plan, so a greystone can be a single-family home, a two-flat, a three-flat or now and then a six-flat (Wikipedia: Greystone).

A coach house is a small dwelling behind the main home, off the alley. Building a new one had been illegal in Chicago for nearly 70 years. City Council voted 46 to 0 on September 25, 2025 to make the coach house pilot permanent, and the ordinance took effect on April 1, 2026 in 34 of the city's 50 wards (WTTW, April 9, 2026). Eligible parcels went from about 116,000 to more than 320,000, roughly 60% of the city, and 14 alderpeople kept their wards out of it (Block Club Chicago, April 1, 2026). If a coach house or a basement unit is part of your plan for a property, the ward it is in decides whether the program covers that lot, so please check the ward before you count on it.

What should you know about the city?

The Loop and LaSalle Street

The Bellwether, the first apartments finished under the city's LaSalle Street Reimagined program, opened to renters on September 9, 2026. It holds 117 apartments on seven floors of the Rector Building at 79 W. Monroe St., 41 of them designated affordable (Block Club Chicago, September 9, 2026). It is the first of six office-to-residential conversions in that program, which together add up to more than $900 million of investment and 1,765 units. Around the corner, Millennium Park is the 24.5-acre northwest corner of Grant Park, and the Art Institute stands inside Grant Park where Michigan Avenue meets Adams Street.

Bronzeville and the South Loop

Bronzeville Lakefront, on the former Michael Reese Hospital site, is a $3.8 billion plan for up to 7 million square feet of commercial, institutional and mixed-income housing (City of Chicago). Its infrastructure work is due to finish in 2026. Southbridge Phase 1C broke ground on April 27, 2026 on the former Harold Ickes Homes site, where Bronzeville, Chinatown and the South Loop meet. At completion Southbridge will hold more than 850 townhomes and apartments, 244 of them reserved for public housing residents under an agreement with the CHA (Block Club Chicago, April 28, 2026). City Council also approved a $24 million, 90-unit building for four vacant lots at 3746 to 3766 S. Michigan Ave. (Block Club Chicago, February 25, 2026).

Jackson Park, Woodlawn and Hyde Park

The Obama Presidential Center opened to the public on June 19, 2026, on a 19.3-acre campus in Jackson Park (Chicago Sun-Times, March 7, 2026). The campus includes a playground, green space, public art, a public forum and a Chicago Public Library branch, and most of it is free to enter. Across the Midway, Woodlawn Central, a multiphase development around the Apostolic Church of God at 6320 S. Dorchester, won Plan Commission approval for 231 residences, a hotel and 23,000 square feet of retail (Block Club Chicago, January 12, 2026).

Since June 15, 2026 every weekday inbound Metra Electric train to Millennium Station stops at 51st/53rd, 55th-56th-57th and 59th/University of Chicago in Hyde Park, about every 20 minutes each way (Block Club Chicago, June 5, 2026). The South Chicago branch gained two hours of evening inbound service, and the Blue Island branch now runs hourly or better at midday.

The Far South Side

The CTA broke ground on the Red Line Extension on April 24, 2026 (WTTW, April 24, 2026). It adds more than five miles of new track from the 95th Street terminal to 130th Street, four accessible stations at 103rd, 111th, Michigan Avenue and 130th, and a new rail yard near 120th Street. Demolition and utility relocation run through 2027, track and station work from 2026 through 2029, and service is expected in 2030. The reported cost is $5.7 billion, per the same WTTW report. If you are looking in Roseland, Pullman or West Pullman, it is worth checking how far the home is from one of those four stations, because from 2030 that walk becomes part of the commute downtown.

River West and Fulton Market

Bally's permanent Chicago casino is under construction on the 30-acre former Chicago Tribune Freedom Center site at 560 W. Grand Ave., with a 500-room hotel, a 3,000-seat theater and a two-acre public riverfront park. The opening has moved three times, from 2025 to September 2026 and now to spring 2027 (Block Club Chicago, May 1, 2026). In Fulton Market, Mars Snacking announced on March 25, 2026 that it is expanding its global headquarters there with a $100 million office and about 600 new jobs (Gov. Pritzker newsroom). Labriola Italian Specialties opened at 852 W. Fulton Market on April 22, 2026, and Gibsons Tavern is expected at 919 W. Fulton St. this fall.

Austin and the West Side

In July 2026 the city unveiled two underground stormwater storage units in Austin that add roughly 1.7 million gallons of temporary capacity (WTTW, July 7, 2026). They are meant to reduce street and basement flooding in parts of the 28th, 29th and 37th wards. The West Side also holds the big parks laid out by the West Park Commissioners and Jens Jensen. Garfield Park has its glasshouse conservatory on Central Park Avenue, Humboldt Park has its lagoons and the only inland beach in Chicago, Douglass Park is in North Lawndale, and Columbus Park is at the city's western edge.

The lakefront and the North Side

Lincoln Park, at about 1,188 acres, is the largest park the Chicago Park District runs, and it carries the Lincoln Park Conservatory and the Green City Market on Clark Street. Montrose Beach is the longest of the city beaches, with a dog area along its north edge that is the only dog beach on the lakefront. Ohio Street Beach in Streeterville faces north, which makes it a training site for open-water swimmers. Wiggly Field at Noethling Park, at Sheffield and Schubert, was the first official dog play area in the city. The 606 runs about three miles along an elevated former rail line across the northwest side, with ramps down to street-level parks. On the far North Side, Weiss Memorial Hospital in Uptown has closed its emergency department, while outpatient services continue (CBS Chicago).

What should you know about the suburbs?

The collar counties are the five Illinois counties that border Cook: DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will (Wikipedia: Collar counties). The federal metro area is wider than that, adding Kendall, DeKalb and Grundy on the Illinois side, and those are the nine counties this page covers. The metro as a whole shrank 0.5% from 2020 to 2024, while the City of Chicago grew in 2025 to an estimated 2,731,585 people (FOX 32 Chicago, May 18, 2026). Those two figures measure different places over different years, so a shrinking metro and a growing city can both be true at the same time.

Arlington Heights, Schaumburg and the northwest suburbs

The Chicago Bears bought the Arlington Park racetrack on February 15, 2023, and the track was fully demolished in August 2025 (Wikipedia: Arlington Park). As of 2026 the stadium question is not settled. The team has told the village it is exploring Hammond, Indiana. A state "megaprojects" bill advanced out of committee on February 26, 2026 and then stalled in the Senate, and the NFL commissioner has said Arlington Heights remains on the table (Chicago Sun-Times, May 11, 2026). If you are buying near the site, please treat every version of the stadium story as undecided.

In Schaumburg, Veridian is the redevelopment of the 225-acre former Motorola campus, bought by UrbanStreet Group in 2016 after Motorola moved its headquarters downtown. The first phase of a 30-acre retail district is 100,000 square feet of retail and 321 apartments, with retail turnover slated for fall 2026 and the apartments opening in 2027 (REBusinessOnline). In July 2026 UrbanStreet proposed converting the last remaining Motorola office building, six stories and 360,200 square feet, to about 300 homes, the start of roughly $1 billion of further work (Daily Herald, July 22, 2026). At full build-out the plan is more than 600 apartments and more than 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, next to the Topgolf already on site.

Elk Grove Village holds 14 of the 34 data center sites that received state incentives through 2025, including an Oracle facility (Capitol News Illinois). Its Busse Woods preserve covers 3,700 acres, and the main loop runs close to eight miles, mostly flat and paved. Northwest Suburban High School District 214 has a $295 million bond question on the November 2026 ballot for renovations at all six of its schools (Daily Herald, September 19, 2026). The paper described it as the district's first referendum in more than half a century.

The North Shore, Skokie and Oak Park

Niles Central's new building and an addition at Niles West opened for the start of the 2026 school year in Niles Township High School District 219 (The Record North Shore, August 17, 2026). Deerfield School District 109 is asking voters for $87,780,000 in bonds this November. Endeavor Health Skokie Hospital and Northwestern Medicine's Lake Forest Hospital both have construction programs under way (Northwestern Medicine). The Chicago Botanic Garden is on Lake Cook Road in Glencoe at the northern edge of Cook County. The Tower Road entrance to the Skokie Lagoons in Winnetka has an accessible trailered launch for canoes, kayaks and boats with electric motors.

Oak Park is where the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio stand on Chicago Avenue, and the village farmers' market sets up Saturdays through October in the Pilgrim Congregational Church lot on Lake Street. West Suburban Medical Center at 3 Erie St. closed to patients in March 2026, when its operator suspended the emergency room, the hospital and its clinics and said services would resume if funding arrived (WBEZ, March 25, 2026). If you are comparing two homes on the near West Side or in the near west suburbs, it is worth checking the drive from each one to an emergency room that is open today.

Naperville and DuPage County

Naperville is now the third-largest city in Illinois, at 153,114 people in 2025, having passed Joliet in 2024 (NBC Chicago). It is in both DuPage and Will counties, so two Naperville addresses can get their tax bills from two different counties. Block 59, a $53 million reconfiguration of the 1990 Westridge Court center on the Route 59 corridor, was expected to be complete by mid-2026, with a run of restaurant openings through the year (Daily Herald, April 27, 2025). Endeavor Health Edward Hospital is adding a two-story vertical addition with 48 beds and a physical therapy gym (Power Construction).

The city publishes a plain explainer on land-cash donations (City of Naperville). A land-cash donation is the land, or the cash in place of land, that a developer gives for schools and parks as a condition of getting a subdivision approved. It is one of the reasons a lot in a newly approved subdivision carries costs that a lot on an older street does not. Centennial Beach, on Jackson Avenue, is a former quarry that the park district runs as a beach rather than a rectangular pool. Springbrook Prairie at 83rd Street and Book Road is an Illinois Nature Preserve with an off-leash dog area. Elmhurst Hospital is in the middle of a $100 million modernization with three more operating rooms, a 16-bed observation unit and four more labor and delivery rooms (Crain's Chicago Business).

Aurora, Elgin and the Fox Valley

Aurora is the second-largest city in the state, with 181,505 people in 2025, and it reaches into Kane, DuPage, Kendall and Will counties. Its casino has just moved. The riverboat Hollywood Casino downtown closed on June 10, 2026 (PENN Entertainment, March 19, 2026). A $360 million land-based casino opened on June 24, 2026 on the west side of Farnsworth Avenue near Chicago Premium Outlets, off I-88, with a 226-room hotel and about 700 employees. The barge and the structures around it downtown are to be demolished, and the riverfront land returns to the City of Aurora for redevelopment. Phillips Park on Ray Moses Drive holds a free zoo, a golf course and a sunken garden.

Elgin's Grand Victoria Casino, a riverboat moored on the Fox River downtown from 1994 onward, is still there (Wikipedia: Grand Victoria Casino Elgin). School District U-46 is building a new middle school on the far east side of Elgin, next to Hilltop Elementary (School District U-46). It is funded by an April 2023 bond of $180 million that the district described as carrying no change in its tax rate. Please check the district's current attendance map for any Elgin address, because the boundary recommendations for the new school went through public meetings in late 2024 and early 2025.

Along the river, Fabyan Forest Preserve straddles the Fox on Route 31 in Geneva, with the Fabyan Villa, a Japanese garden and a Dutch windmill, and the park district in St. Charles launches canoes from Pottawatomie Park. Two Fox Valley school bond questions are on the November ballot. Batavia District 101 is asking for a $140 million bond issue (Patch, Batavia). Community Unit School District 300, which covers parts of Kane, McHenry, Cook and DeKalb counties, put a $355.5 million bond on the ballot by a unanimous board vote on July 21. The Daily Herald reported that the CUSD 300 bond would raise property taxes about $101 a year on a $400,000 home (Daily Herald, September 19, 2026).

Joliet and Will County

Joliet is the fourth-largest city in Illinois, at 152,241 people in 2025, and 2026 is a year of big projects there. The I-80 rebuild through Will County is a $1.3 billion program under Rebuild Illinois. As of February 2026 about 60% of it was substantially complete, and nearly 80% is expected by the end of 2026 (The Herald-News, February 27, 2026). The whole program is due to be substantially complete at the end of 2028. The 1960s Des Plaines River bridges are being replaced by two wider structures 300 feet to the north, at $164 million (Gov. Pritzker newsroom). I-80 runs two lanes each way between Richards and Center streets until that work finishes in 2028.

Joliet's water source changes in 2030. The city signed a 100-year agreement to buy treated Lake Michigan water from Chicago, because the deep aquifer it uses now is expected to stop meeting peak demand by then (Inside Climate News, September 28, 2024). Joliet, Crest Hill, Channahon, Minooka, Romeoville and Shorewood formed the Grand Prairie Water Commission to buy it together. The U.S. EPA provided a $610 million loan in March 2026 toward a project estimated near $1.5 billion (The Herald-News, March 30, 2026). Joliet's monthly water rates are expected to nearly triple, to about $88, by 2030. If you are buying in any of those six towns, that is a recurring cost worth putting in your budget now.

Joliet approved the largest data center in Illinois, a 795-acre, roughly $20 billion, 24-building campus by Hillwood Investment Properties, with construction phased through 2032 (Bisnow). Hyundai Translead announced on March 16, 2026 that it will build commercial trailers at two Will County plants, a $450 million investment with up to 2,500 jobs (Gov. Pritzker newsroom). The plants go on the former Caterpillar and former Lion Electric sites, with construction starting in the third quarter of 2026 and first production in the second quarter of 2027. South of the city, NorthPoint Development is building a warehouse park on about 4,000 acres beside the 6,400-acre CenterPoint Intermodal Center. On September 16, 2026 the City Council approved land dedications for a NorthPoint bridge over Illinois Route 53, meant to keep trucks off Route 53 and residential streets (The Herald-News, September 16, 2026). IDOT had not yet approved the bridge at that date. Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet closed its pediatric inpatient unit as of June 29, 2026, while the main hospital continues to operate (NBC Chicago).

The Joliet Area Historical Museum on Ottawa Street doubles as the Route 66 welcome center, and from Channahon State Park the I and M Canal State Trail follows the old towpath about 61 miles west to LaSalle.

Plainfield, Shorewood and New Lenox

Keller Farm, at Lockport Street and Wallin Drive in Plainfield, is 322 single-family detached homes and 83 townhomes in 18 buildings, with two parks and walking trails, and homes were under construction as of April 2026 (Patch, Plainfield). Plainfield publishes its development and impact fees on its own site (Village of Plainfield). An impact fee is a one-time charge on new construction that helps pay for the roads, parks and schools that growth needs, and in Illinois each village sets its own. In April 2026 the Plainfield Village Board passed a resolution urging the state not to take zoning authority away from municipalities (The Herald-News, April 24, 2026).

Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 moved its attendance boundaries in January 2026 because of overcrowding, so students in several subdivisions attend a different high school from the 2026-27 school year (The Times Weekly, January 2026). Please get the current boundary for any Plainfield address from the district's own board materials rather than from a listing.

Yorkville, Oswego and Kendall County

Kendall County is the fastest-growing county in Illinois, at about 1.86% a year, ahead of Grundy and McHenry (Axios Chicago, January 6, 2025), and it was the fastest-growing county in the United States between 2000 and 2010. Yorkville and Oswego renewed their planning boundary agreement in 2026, drawing a line so each can plan its own annexations and zoning (Kendall County Now, February 28, 2026). The Fox Bluff Vacation Cottage and RV Resort is at the center of it. Yorkville has a parallel agreement with Plano. If you are buying out here, the boundary agreement decides which town an unincorporated address will one day join.

Yorkville has also become a data center town. In March 2026 the City Council approved "Project Steel," a 540-acre campus of 16 warehouses, after a nearly six-hour meeting, and "Project Cardinal," 14 warehouses totaling 17 million square feet (Kendall County Now, March 23, 2026). The two projects' up-front payments could send about $91 million to the city (Kendall County Now, March 6, 2026). That includes $30 million from Project Steel direct to Yorkville School District 115 and $38.25 million the city committed to the district out of Project Cardinal. That money landed the same month voters rejected the district's $275 million bond at the March 2026 primary. The bond, $275,143,683, is back on the November ballot, and a 110-acre site north of River Road, west of Game Farm Road and east of Eldamain Road, is slated for a new school.

Huntley, Crystal Lake and McHenry County

Huntley is best known for Del Webb's Sun City Huntley, a 55+ community of 5,481 homes across 41 neighborhoods, built by Pulte between 1999 and 2012 (Sun City Huntley). It is north of I-90, with indoor and outdoor pools, a woodworking shop and the 18-hole Whisper Creek golf course. The community's own rules set its age requirements. In Cary, access to Lake Atwood inside The Hollows Conservation Area was rebuilt in 2025, and Glacial Park near Ringwood takes its name from the glacial kames inside it. Moraine Hills State Park on River Road in McHenry runs beside the Fox River and takes in McHenry Dam.

Much of McHenry County outside the towns is on a private well and a septic system. Illinois has no statewide inspection mandate for either, and the McHenry County health department offers evaluations without requiring one for a sale (McHenry County). So please ask your attorney and your lender early whether your contract or your loan calls for one. The same is true in unincorporated Lake, Kendall, DeKalb, Grundy and outer Will counties.

Lake County

Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, established in 1911, is the Navy's largest training installation and its only boot camp, with about 38,000 recruits a year going through Recruit Training Command (MilitaryINSTALLATIONS). If you are relocating there on orders, how VA loans work in Illinois covers entitlement, the funding fee and what changes at an Illinois closing. AbbVie is adding $380 million of new facilities and about 300 jobs at its North Chicago manufacturing campus (The News-Gazette).

The county's 2026 construction list includes new signals, turn lanes and ADA ramps at Illinois 120 and O'Plaine Road near Gurnee and Waukegan, expected to run from spring to fall 2026 (Lake County). It also includes bike and pedestrian paths along Washington Street near Gurnee. Illinois Beach State Park in Zion covers 4,160 acres and more than six miles of Lake Michigan shoreline. North Point Marina at Winthrop Harbor is the northernmost harbor on the Illinois shore, and Independence Grove in Libertyville is built around a lake with a paved loop trail.

DeKalb, Sycamore, Morris and the outer counties

Meta's DeKalb data center is operating, and the company committed more than $1 billion to take the campus to five buildings and about 2.4 million square feet, supporting about 200 jobs (Gov. Pritzker news release). Meta also partnered with Northern Illinois University on STEM programming for DeKalb High School students, including $290,000 in grants and the NIU Barb City STEAM Studio. The DeKalb Public Library on Oak Street is built around the historic Haish Memorial Library, and from the Sycamore trailhead the Great Western Trail runs four miles through DeKalb County and fourteen more into Kane.

Grundy County is the southwest corner of the metro, and Morris is its county seat. Goose Lake Prairie State Natural Area on Jugtown Road protects prairie and marsh northeast of town, Heidecke Lake has a three-lane concrete boat ramp beside it, and William G. Stratton State Park on Ottawa Street is mainly a boat access point on the Illinois River.

Tinley Park and the south suburbs

The 280-acre former Tinley Park Mental Health Center site is bounded roughly by 183rd Street, Harlem Avenue, 175th Street and 80th Avenue. The State of Illinois transferred it to the Tinley Park Park District for $1 under a law signed in August 2023 (Village of Tinley Park). Phase 1 covers 90 acres of recreation, with ball fields, a track, a splash pad and a pool (WGN). A further $18 million state grant, on top of an earlier $15 million, funds the cleanup and the demolition of nearly every remaining building. In Palos Hills, a bluff about 100 feet high rises at Swallow Cliff Woods, with 125 limestone stairs running up the face of it. On the Rock Island line, Metra's Auburn Park station is scheduled to open in 2026 as part of a construction program that touches 20 stations and replaces 22 grade crossings (Metra).

What rules changed for building in 2026?

Two state and city rules changed this year in ways that reach a buyer directly.

Parking minimums near transit are gone statewide. The Illinois People Over Parking Act took effect on June 1, 2026. It bars any Illinois municipality, Chicago included, from requiring minimum car parking for a development within half a mile of a public transportation hub (Streetsblog Chicago, October 31, 2025). The same applies within an eighth of a mile of a transit corridor with frequent service. Hotels are excepted, and towns can still set parking maximums. Geneva has already published its text amendments (City of Geneva). If you are buying a condo near a Metra station, this rule shapes what can be built next door.

Chicago's coach house program is permanent in 34 of 50 wards, as the vocabulary section above explains. The city also passed a Green Social Housing ordinance in May 2025 for mixed-income rental buildings with at least 30% affordable units and a majority city ownership stake (City of Chicago). The city planned to break ground on the first one in 2026.

Impact fees may get a state formula. Illinois has no statewide impact-fee formula today; the Municipal Code lets a municipality require land, or cash in its place, for school grounds, and each village sets its own schedule (Illinois Municipal League). HB 5626 and SB 4062, introduced on February 19, 2026 as part of the governor's BUILD initiative, would require towns that collect impact fees to use uniform state formulas (Elrod Friedman LLP). As of this writing they are pending, and Plainfield's April resolution is the local side of that argument.

Which road, rail and airport projects change a commute?

I-294, the Central Tri-State. The Illinois Tollway is rebuilding 22 miles from Balmoral Avenue to 95th Street, a $4 billion project scheduled from 2018 to 2027 that carries more than 300,000 vehicles a day. Mainline reconstruction runs through 2026. Between I-55 and North Avenue, traffic stays shifted all year, and on some stretches one direction runs on the far side of the road from where it normally does (Illinois Tollway).

I-490 and western access to O'Hare. I-490 is a six-mile all-electronic tollway under construction between I-294 and the west side of O'Hare. The I-490 and IL 390 interchange is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2027, and the two roads together are projected to carry about 120,000 vehicles a day (Illinois Tollway).

I-80 through Joliet and the Red Line Extension are covered in their own sections above.

Transit funding is settled through 2026. The region's transit agencies faced a $230 million shortfall in 2026, with warnings of service cuts of up to 40%. The General Assembly passed SB 2111 on October 31, 2025, and the governor signed it on December 16, 2025. It provides about $1.2 billion a year in new operating funding and about $180 million a year for capital (RTA, November 10, 2025). It also replaces the RTA with the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, or NITA, which now sets fares and coordinates service. There are no service cuts, fare increases or layoffs in 2026.

O'Hare. The new Concourse D, with 19 gates, is on schedule for late 2028. The northern half of Concourse E breaks ground in fall 2026 and opens in 2030 with 14 gates. The O'Hare Global Terminal is now scheduled to open in 2033, with the whole ORDNext program complete in 2034 (Crain's Chicago Business, August 20, 2026). Older articles give earlier dates for the Global Terminal; the schedule was redrawn in 2026.

What is on the November 2026 ballot?

Five suburban school districts have bond questions on the ballot, and a bond is repaid through the property tax bills of the homes in that district (Daily Herald, September 19, 2026):

• Community Unit School District 300 (parts of Kane, McHenry, Cook and DeKalb counties): $355.5 million
• Northwest Suburban High School District 214: $295 million in new bonding authority
• Yorkville Community Unit School District 115 (Kendall County): $275,143,683
• Deerfield School District 109 (Lake County): $87,780,000
• Batavia District 101 (Kane County): $140 million

The Chicago Board of Education put two non-binding questions on the same ballot, asking whether voters support a millionaire's tax and financial penalties on undeveloped city property as future school funding. Both are non-binding, so the vote by itself does not change anyone's tax bill (Chalkbeat Chicago, August 13, 2026). Chicago Public Schools' 2026-27 budget is about $10 billion with a projected shortfall of about $732 million (WTTW, May 20, 2026). If the home you are considering is in one of the five districts above, the result of that vote will show up on its future tax bills.

Which county is the home in, and how does Cook County assess it?

Several of the largest towns cross county lines. Naperville is in DuPage and Will, Aurora reaches into Kane, DuPage, Kendall and Will, Elgin is in Kane and Cook, and Huntley is in McHenry and Kane. So when you are comparing two homes with the same town in the address, please ask which county each one is in before you compare the tax figures. The county's property records will tell you.

On any address here, the property tax line is worth looking up early, because Illinois rates run among the highest in the country. The Illinois Policy Institute puts Illinois and New Jersey tied at an average effective rate of 1.88% of home value in 2024, while other compilations rank Illinois second at about 2.07% (Illinois Policy Institute). Either way, the bill is built from the pieces below.

Cook County works differently from the other eight counties. It is the only county in Illinois that sets different assessment levels by property type. The assessed value is the share of a property's market value that the tax rate is applied to. In Cook County residential property is assessed at 10% of market value, while commercial and industrial property is assessed at 25% (Civic Federation). Cook County also reassesses on a three-year cycle, one third of the county at a time, and the locals call each third a triad. In 2026 the south and west suburban townships are being reassessed; the north and northwest suburbs were reassessed in 2025 and come up again in 2027 (Cook County Assessor). A property outside the active triad keeps its assessment unless it is divided, permitted or otherwise changed, and owners can still appeal when their township opens. If you are buying in a south or west suburban township this year, you are buying into a year when the assessment moves, so please ask the assessor's office what the new figure is.

Exemptions in Cook County appear on the second-installment tax bill, which is issued in the summer (Cook County). The Low-Income Senior Freeze is open to homeowners over 65 within an income limit, and it has to be applied for every year (Cook County Assessor). It freezes the value the county taxes the home on, so the bill itself can still move when the tax rate moves. The income limit changes beginning with tax year 2026, so please confirm the current figure with the Assessor before you count on it.

A purchase also resets what the county has on file for the home, and the seller's bill on a listing reflects the seller's exemptions and the seller's assessment. I explain how that timing works in what happens to your property taxes after you buy.

What is different about an Illinois contract and closing?

Three separate transfer taxes can apply to one Chicago sale, and the buyer pays part of the city's. The State of Illinois and Cook County each charge a transfer tax, and by custom the seller pays both. The City of Chicago charges $5.25 per $500 of the sale price in total, split into a $3.75 city portion that the buyer pays and a $1.50 CTA portion that the seller pays (Lysinski, Chicago Closing Costs 2026). The flat split survived a ballot fight: the graduated "Bring Chicago Home" measure was defeated, and the flat structure remained in effect as of May 2026. The buyer's share is part of your cash to close. The figures below use an invented sale price, so you can see how the arithmetic works:

Sale price (invented)                $400,000
Divided into $500 units                   800
City portion, buyer pays          x     $3.75
                                     --------
Buyer's transfer tax                   $3,000

Many suburbs charge their own municipal transfer tax as well, often on the seller and sometimes tied to a water bill or inspection sign-off, so please ask your attorney which one applies to the address you are considering.

Attorney review is standard. Most Illinois residential contracts carry a five-business-day attorney review period that starts the next business day after both parties sign. Weekends and federal holidays do not count, and the clock does not stretch because someone was slow to send the contract to their attorney. Either side's attorney may approve the contract, propose changes or end it (O'Flaherty Law). If you are arriving from a state where a title company alone runs the closing, this is the first difference you will meet, and the Illinois page covers the lawyers-and-a-title-company model in full.

Radon paperwork. Under the Illinois Radon Awareness Act, a seller gives the buyer two documents before the contract is signed (Illinois Emergency Management Agency). One is the IEMA pamphlet on radon testing in real estate transactions. The other is the Illinois Disclosure of Information on Radon Hazards form, on which the seller states whether they know of elevated radon and whether test records exist. Prior test results have to be disclosed. The Act does not require anyone to test or to fix a problem, though many Illinois form contracts add those terms.

The 22.1 disclosure for condos and associations. Section 22.1 of the Illinois Condominium Property Act requires a resale seller to give the buyer a disclosure covering the current monthly assessment, any special assessments levied or being considered, and the association's governing documents. Since January 1, 2023 the association has 10 business days to produce it (KSN Law). A buyer may be able to avoid a later special assessment for a capital project that was left out of the 22.1, so please read it closely. Given how much of the city is two-flats, three-flats and condo buildings, this document comes up on a large share of Chicago purchases, and the assessment it shows goes into the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on.

What is the flood picture?

Flooding in the Chicago area is mostly about sewers and rivers rather than a coast. In much of the city and the older suburbs, the neighborhood sewer carries both stormwater and sewage. In a heavy storm it can back up into basements even when the region's Deep Tunnel is working (WBEZ, April 10, 2026). The Deep Tunnel is the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, about 110 miles of tunnel hundreds of feet down feeding the Thornton, McCook and Majewski reservoirs, with more than 13 billion gallons of storage (MWRD). Its job is to keep sewage out of the river and the lake. It does not stop the sewer pipe under your own street from backing up when a heavy storm fills it faster than it can drain.

2026 has been a heavy year. The McCook Reservoir reached capacity six times in 2026 alone, against five times in the previous five years combined, and the area logged nearly 26 inches of precipitation through July. The Austin storage tanks in the West Side section are one answer to that. So on any home with a basement, it is worth asking the seller about past water in it, looking for a backflow valve or a sump pump, and asking a neighbor what the July storms did on that block.

River flooding is the other part of the picture, and the state keeps a public record of where it has stepped in. Illinois has bought out or elevated more than 4,000 of its most flood-prone structures starting from 1993, and the public Illinois Buyouts Database lists them (Illinois Flood Maps). Seventy-one Illinois communities take part in FEMA's Community Rating System, which gives flood insurance discounts of 5% to 45% depending on the community's class. A flood insurance agent can tell you which class applies to a given address. For a property in FEMA's high-risk flood area, the lender will require flood insurance, and that premium becomes part of your monthly payment. I explain how to price it in before you make an offer in buying a home in a flood zone.

Homeowners insurance is moving too. Premiums in Illinois rose about 50% between 2021 and 2024 and another 14.1% in 2025, and in 2024 only Texas reported more hail damage than Illinois (WBEZ, March 27, 2026). So please get an insurance quote on the specific address early, because the premium is inside the same monthly payment as the taxes.

How do these facts reach your mortgage?

Prices differ across the nine counties, and the sources measure different things. Illinois REALTORS put the nine-county metro median sale price at $401,000 in August 2026, up 6.8% from a year earlier, with the City of Chicago at $425,000 in July (Illinois REALTORS). Redfin's county figures for August 2026 put Cook County at $383,716, DuPage at $448,499 and Lake at $428,566 (Redfin). The two sets use different data and do not reconcile, so please read any price figure with its source attached.

Every one of the nine counties carries the same 2026 loan limits, and they are in the box below this article. The conforming limit is the largest loan Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy in a county, and a loan above it is called a jumbo loan. The FHA limit here is the national floor, the same figure as in a rural county. The metro median and every county median this page cites, DuPage's included, are below that FHA limit, so price alone rarely decides between programs here. The page on conforming versus jumbo loans explains what changes when a loan crosses the conforming line.

If you are a first-time buyer, the Illinois Housing Development Authority launched IHDAccess Home in March 2026. It offers up to $15,000 or 6% of the purchase price, whichever is less, toward down payment and closing costs, as a second mortgage that is forgiven over ten years (Gov. Pritzker newsroom). It became IHDA's most-used assistance program this year. Funding is first-come, first-served, and the income limits differ by county, so please check the current limit for your county with IHDA directly.

Taxes, insurance, a condo or association assessment and any water or flood cost all go into the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. The Chicago transfer tax and the attorney's fee are part of your cash to close instead. Pre-approval in Illinois covers what the letter is based on, and it is the place to start once you know the county.

When you're ready, you can run your numbers for a purchase anywhere in the nine counties: rates for your scenario and Illinois closing costs, with no credit pull and no account. Choose the option that works best for you, and the application opens from there.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The assessment and the exemptions on a specific parcel are set by that county's assessor, so please confirm them with the county office.

Common questions

Which counties are the collar counties?

The collar counties are DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will, the five Illinois counties that border Cook County. The federal metro area is wider: it also takes in Kendall, DeKalb and Grundy counties on the Illinois side, plus four counties in Indiana that this page does not cover.

Who pays the transfer tax when you buy in Chicago?

Both sides pay part of it. The City of Chicago's transfer tax has a city portion, which the buyer pays, and a CTA portion, which the seller pays. The State of Illinois and Cook County each charge their own transfer tax, and by custom the seller pays those. Many suburbs charge a municipal transfer tax as well, so your attorney checks the rule for the specific address.

When is my Cook County township reassessed?

Cook County reassesses one third of the county each year on a three-year cycle. In 2026 the south and west suburban townships are being reassessed. The north and northwest suburbs were reassessed in 2025 and come up again in 2027. The Cook County Assessor's calendar lists each township's year, and owners can appeal when their township opens.

What is attorney review in Illinois?

It is a five-business-day window written into most Illinois residential contracts, starting the next business day after both parties sign. During it, either side's attorney may approve the contract, propose changes or end it. Weekends and federal holidays do not count toward the five days.

What is a 22.1 disclosure?

It is the resale disclosure required by Section 22.1 of the Illinois Condominium Property Act. The seller of a condo or association home gives the buyer the current monthly assessment, any special assessments levied or being considered, and the association's governing documents. Since 2023 the association has 10 business days to produce it.

When will the Red Line extension open?

The CTA broke ground on April 24, 2026, and service is expected in 2030. The extension adds four stations at 103rd, 111th, Michigan Avenue and 130th, with demolition and utility work through 2027 and track and station construction from 2026 through 2029.

Is the Bears stadium in Arlington Heights decided?

No. The Bears own the former Arlington Park site, and the track was demolished in August 2025, but as of 2026 the team has also explored Hammond, Indiana, and the state's stadium financing bill stalled in the Senate. The NFL commissioner has said Arlington Heights remains on the table, and nothing about the stadium is settled.