"Bidding Wars Are Over in Chicago." Here's What 957 Sales Say.

Let me take a moment to address something I hear at almost every open house these days. People tell me the multiple-offer market is done, that buyers finally have the upper hand, that nobody pays over asking anymore. I understand why they think that. Rates moved, headlines shifted, and the mood in a lot of rooms feels calmer than it did a couple of years ago.

Here's what's actually true. In the twelve weeks ending September 20, 2026, across the Chicago ZIP codes I work in day to day, 56.8% of homes that sold went for more than their asking price. That's not a fringe outcome. That's more than half.

I want to sit with that number for a second, because it surprises people every time I say it out loud. We are talking about 957 closed sales with both a sale price and an asking price on record. Of those, the majority sold above what the seller was asking. That's the market as it actually behaved, not as it gets described at a barbecue.

The pricing data backs this up from another angle. The median sale-to-list percentage, meaning the middle sale compared to its asking price, came in at 101.1% for this period. A year earlier, in the twelve weeks ending September 21, 2025, that same figure sat at 100%. So the typical sale is landing a little higher above asking than it did a year ago, about 1.1 percentage points higher.

Then there's price itself. The median sale price across these ZIP codes was $710,000 this period. A year earlier it was $650,000. That's $60,000 higher on the middle sale.

I won't pretend every block in Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown and Wicker Park behaves identically. It doesn't. But the aggregate signal across all four ZIP codes points one direction, and it isn't the direction most people assume.

What does this look like in real life? From what I've seen walking these streets, it means a well-priced, well-presented home in this pocket of the city is still drawing real competition. It means a seller who prices thoughtfully isn't necessarily leaving money on the table by waiting for a single buyer to show up. And it means a buyer walking in assuming they'll have room to negotiate below asking should know that, for well over half the closed sales, that wasn't how it played out.

For sellers here, this is a moment worth understanding clearly before listing. For buyers, it means going in with a realistic sense of what competition looks like right now, not what it looked like a few years back or what gets repeated as conventional wisdom.

What would change my read? I'd want to watch whether that sale-to-list percentage holds steady or drifts back toward the year-earlier figure over the next reporting period. If it keeps climbing, that tells a different story than if it flattens out.

I would encourage anyone who's been sitting on the sidelines wondering what their place would actually fetch in this environment to reach out. I'm happy to walk through what these numbers mean for your specific situation and give you a straightforward read on what your home could list for right now.

Maureen Moran