Chicago's year in home sales ended much hotter than the nation's — with the median price of homes here rising 11 times as fast as the nation's.
In the Chicago metro area, the median price of homes sold in December was $355,000, an increase of 4.4% from the same time a year ago, according to data released Jan. 22 by Illinois Realtors.
Meanwhile, the median price of homes sold nationwide was $405,400, an increase of 0.4%, according to data released the same day by the National Association of Realtors.
See a mathematical caveat later in this story, but even with it factored in, the truth remains that Chicago's home prices have stayed warm as the nation's chilled.
Here what's else to know from the latest Chicago-area housing market data.
Home prices in the city of Chicago grew by less in December than they did metro-wide, but still by considerably more than the nation's home prices. The median price of homes sold in Chicago in December was $350,000, up 2.9% from the same time in 2024.
The overall strength in the housing market here relative to the nation has been ongoing for months, as Chicago's home prices show a resilience that many parts of the nation can't muster.
Analysts attribute the divergence to an after-effect of the COVID-19 pandemic era. Home prices grew here during that boom, but by far less than they did in "pandemic darling" cities like Phoenix. Thus there's still headroom for price growth here while buyers in those cities pull back.
Even so, strong price growth now shows the staying power of the Chicago area's housing economy, even if it means new buyers' affordability is shrinking fast.
There's one caveat to the comparison between regional and national home price growth figures: the Chicago-area figure includes all homes sold, both new and used, while the national figure is only for existing, or used, homes. Nationwide, more than 12% of homes sold are new construction and excluded from the report, while in the Chicago area, 3% are new homes and they're included.
Clearly, the change in median prices would look a little different if the Illinois Realtors and National Association of Realtors data reports were aligned.
Chicago leads major U.S. cities in price growth
Chicago's home prices are rising faster than those in any major U.S. metro area, according to data out today from the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Indices.
In November, Chicago-area home values were up 5.7%, the index says. That's the highest among the 19 major metros the index includes. (Ordinarily it's 20, but the data for Detroit has been missing in recent months.)
The Chicago figure, which trails the Realtors' data by a month, is more than four times the nation's home price increase in November, which the index puts at 1.36%. In last month's report, Chicago was also running more than four times the nation.
In nine of the 19, prices were down in November, and in another five they rose by less than 0.5%, meaning they were essentially flat from a year before.
"The housing market has entered a period of tepid growth," Nicholas Godec, head of fixed income tradables and commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in prepared comments. Godec said Chicago's 5.7% increase, New York's 5% and Cleveland's 3.4% show that these markets "have maintained respectable gains even as overall conditions cool."
Over the course of a year, Chicago's price growth went from from 6.21% to 5.7%, compared with a loss of more than 2 percentage points in the national figure for November. The index's figure for nationwide price growth was 3.75% in November 2024, compared with 1.36% in the latest report.
Home sales barely grew in 2025
The year 2025 ended with 89,091 homes sold in the Chicago metro area, an increase of 0.6% from the year before, according to Illinois Realtors data.
That is essentially flat with the year-end tally for 2024, which ended with the fewest homes sold in any year since 2011.
Sales have been held down in large part by elevated interest rates and rising prices, which conspire to keep existing homeowners feeling a move to another home is too costly. Thus there are fewer houses up for sale, resulting not only in fewer closed sales but buyers having to pay more for the ones that are available.
The National Association of Realtors does not provide the same year-end tally, but a look at December's sales figures highlights a difference. Nationwide, home sales that month were up 1.4% from December 2024, but in Chicago sales were up 0.4%, to 1,615 homes sold, and in the metro area sales were down 0.2%, to 6,637.
The flat number of sales in Chicago area's overall housing market is in sharp contrast to the year in high-end home sales, which soared past the 2024 total and set a record.
The Illinois Realtors data uses the U.S. Census Bureau definition of the Chicago metro area, which comprises Cook, Lake, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, McHenry and Will counties.
