Chicago Home Prices Hit a Third Straight Record in May, Even as the Rest of the Country Cools

For the third month running, home prices in Chicago set a new record in May, and the gap between Chicago and the rest of the country just got wider. While national price growth has slowed to a crawl, Chicago is doing what it's done for months now: tightening while other markets loosen, and rising while other markets flatten or fall. Here's what the latest numbers, first reported by Crain's Chicago Business, mean if you're buying or selling here.

Prices soar here, flatten nationwide

The median price of a home sold in Chicago in May was $420,000, up 7.7% from a year earlier and the biggest year-over-year jump since May 2025's 8.3% increase, according to Illinois Realtors data released June 25. Across the nine-county metro area, the median sale price was $399,990, up 5.5% from a year ago and the largest increase since October, when prices were up 7.9%.

Compare that to the country as a whole. The National Association of Realtors reported that the median price of existing homes sold nationally in May was up just 1.3% from a year earlier. Chicago's price growth ran at more than four times the national pace.

Chicago is outpacing every major metro, and the gap is widening

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Indices report, released June 30, shows Chicago leading all major U.S. cities in home price growth for several months running. What's new in this report is how much further ahead Chicago has pulled. Chicago's home prices grew 6.5% in April, compared with 3.8% in second-place New York, a 2.7 percentage point gap that's the widest it's been all year. Back in February, New York trailed Chicago by just 0.3 points. The gap to third-place Cleveland has also widened, from 0.9 points in February to 3.3 points in May.

Nationally, Case-Shiller shows home prices up just 0.8% year over year in April. Nine of the 19 major metros tracked by the index actually saw prices fall in April, with Seattle down the most at 2.3%. As S&P Dow Jones Indices' Nicholas Godec put it, the nearly 9-point spread between Chicago and Seattle "highlights how localized housing trends remain."

Tight inventory keeps the pressure on

A month ago, a surge in new listings looked like it might finally ease the squeeze on Chicago buyers. It didn't last. After two weeks of more than 4,100 new listings, Midwest Real Estate Data's weekly reports show inventory settling back into the tight range it's held for months. New listings haven't topped 3,300 in five straight weeks, and the week ending June 29 brought just 3,075 new listings, slightly below the 3,086 recorded in the same week last year.

Chicago's overall inventory remains the tightest of any major U.S. metro. At 2.9 months of supply in May, Chicago has less available housing stock than any other large market in the country, according to a June 24 Homes.com report. Nationwide, available inventory was up 4.3% year over year in May; in Chicago it was up just 1.6%.

Fewer listings mean fewer sales

With fewer homes coming to market, fewer are selling, and here again Chicago is moving opposite the national trend, where sales actually rose in May. Metro-area home sales were down 1% from a year ago, and city sales were down 1.5%, per Illinois Realtors.

The scale of the slowdown is notable: 12,408 homes sold across the metro area in May, the fewest for a May since 2012 (excluding the pandemic-disrupted May 2020), when 12,192 homes sold during the tail end of the 2008 housing crash recovery. In the city, 2,283 homes sold in May, also the lowest since 2012's 2,124, aside from 2020.

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