Chicago’s luxury housing market remains active after record-breaking 2025

Chicago’s luxury housing market has continued to show resilience and momentum in 2026, with a number of villages showing significant growth for homes listed at $1.5M and up over the year.

While Chicago’s overall housing market recorded a median sale price of approximately $390,000 in September 2026, per data aggregator Illinois Realtors, luxury properties in premier neighborhoods are commanding significantly higher prices. Limited housing supply and demand for distinctive properties have continued to help support values across several of the city’s most desirable residential communities.

According to the Chicago Business Journal, Hinsdale has been the fastest-growing luxury market in the Prairie State recently, with an average sale price of $1.9M in the third quarter, a figure that is up over 19% from last year, signalling strong fundamentals within the high-end real estate market.

The other top zip codes for luxury listings in the area included the north suburban townships of Glencoe, Winnetka and Kenilworth, which each saw average sale prices jump dramatically year over year.

The publication derived the methodology by leveraging real estate data from Intercontinental Exchange Inc. The calculation took into account four primary metrics: average listing price, average sale price, listing-to-sale ratio, and total days listed to help determine their rankings.         

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Across the country, some of the most rapidly growing luxury markets include popular Florida waterfront destinations like Palm Beach, Belleair Beach (metro Tampa Bay), and Miami; Newport Beach in California, a small coastal enclave located south of downtown Los Angeles; and East Coast suburbs Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and Locust Valley, New York, popular affluent locales within commuting distance of Manhattan. 

According to Crain's Chicago, the city’s ultra-luxury housing market, which looks at sales of $4M and up, reached new heights in 2025 with a record 156 home transactions at or above that benchmark. That number smashed the previous high watermark of 136 in 2022.

While 2026 has not seen quite that level of pace, Crain's notes that through the end of June this year, the Chicagoland area has seen 62 sales above that price threshold, indicating another active year within the sector.

The broader Chicagoland area's highest sale of the year thus far has been a $17.5M acquisition of a Glencoe home previously owned by the president of Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing.

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According to a report from Ryan Hardy Real Estate, higher mortgage rates and limited inventory are influencing buyer decisions, making property condition, location, and pricing increasingly important. Well-maintained homes in established neighborhoods continue to attract serious interest, while properties requiring significant renovations or carrying ambitious asking prices may face longer marketing periods.

Whether the back half of 2026 will produce as much activity as its predecessor remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Chicago’s wealthiest individuals still value the city and its surrounding area as one of the premier communities for affluent living.