Home › Progress › Rents and prices
Rents and prices
The typical asking rent is $2,311, up 5.8% in a year.
Rents through Sept. 2026 · sales through 2025 · updated every morning
Typical asking rent each January
The same rents twice: as advertised, and after taking out inflation.
As advertised
In 2026 dollars
Asking rents are up 36% since January 2019. After inflation, they are up about 5%: most of the rise matched prices in general.
Rent by ZIP code
What the federal government figures a modest home rents for in each Chicago ZIP code, utilities included. It sets these every year to size rent vouchers.
Highest two-bedroom figures below the ceiling
Lowest
The middle Chicago ZIP code’s two-bedroom figure is $2,010 for fiscal 2027; the lowest is $1,500 (60632). 13 ZIP codes share the top figure, $3,020, because HUD caps a ZIP code at 150% of the area-wide figure: 60601, 60602, 60604, 60605, 60606, 60607, 60610, 60611, 60614, 60642, 60654, 60657, 60661.
Sale prices
Median sale price in Chicago, not adjusted for inflation.
| 2019 | 2021 | 2023 | 2025 | Since 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| House | $230,000 | $295,000 | $285,000 | $320,000 | +39% |
| Condo | $260,000 | $288,000 | $280,000 | $329,000 | +27% |
| 2- to 6-flat | $275,000 | $375,000 | $375,000 | $450,000 | +64% |
No city program sets a target for rents or sale prices
Rents and prices are the result the other sections add up to, so this section is a readout, not a scorecard.
ZIP code rents are HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents for fiscal 2027 and 2019: for each ZIP code, the rent plus utilities that 40% of recently rented standard homes come in under. HUD builds them from Census surveys a few years old plus a trend, so they trail the market; no ZIP code can be set above 150% of the metro area’s figure or below the state’s minimum (HUD, fiscal 2027 Small Area Fair Market Rent methodology). ZIP code price changes are the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s yearly house price index, which follows repeat sales and refinancings of the same homes and is published only where there are enough of them. Asking rent is Zillow’s Observed Rent Index for the city: rents advertised for homes on the market, all sizes, smoothed. It runs above what sitting tenants pay. The 2026-dollar figures use the national Consumer Price Index (yearly averages; 2026 is the average of the months published so far, so the last step is an estimate). Sale prices are the median of what sold that year, not the same homes. They come from the Cook County Assessor’s sales in Chicago, leaving out sales under $10,000, resales within a year, unusual deeds and multi-parcel sales.
Sources: Zillow Observed Rent Index (city of Chicago); Census American Community Survey 2024; Cook County Assessor parcel sales; Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U; HUD Small Area Fair Market Rents, fiscal 2019 and 2027; Federal Housing Finance Agency house price index by ZIP code.