Chicago Magazine Ranked All 205 Chicagoland Suburbs. The Fastest-Selling Town in Cook County Finished Outside the Top 10.

The ranking measures eight things. Not one of them is what a house costs, how fast it sells, or what you'll pay in property taxes. So I added those columns.

Chicago magazine did something different with its suburb rankings this year. Instead of a curated list shaped by editors and local experts, it went all-numbers: every one of the 205 suburbs with more than 5,000 people across Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, scored and stacked from top to bottom with help from the analytics firm DataJoe.

The results got people talking. Libertyville, which hadn't appeared on the magazine's recent lists at all, landed at No. 2. Oak Brook came in at No. 157. Oak Park — a town that shows up on practically every "best of" list in the region — landed at No. 57, and the magazine itself flagged that as a limitation of a purely quantitative approach.

It's a genuinely interesting list. But if you're actually buying or selling a house in the next six months, it's answering a different question than the one you're asking. Here's what it measures, and here's the column it doesn't have.

What the ranking actually scores

The magazine published its methodology, which is more than most rankings do. Each suburb was scored across eight weighted categories:

• Community — 18.2%. The heaviest weight. Racial and linguistic diversity, share of residents with bachelor's degrees, low poverty, low unemployment.

• Housing — 13.6%. One- and five-year increases in median single-family sale prices, homeownership rate, and low vacancy.

• Mobility — 13.6%. Walk Score and bike scores, plus rail and bus access.

• Entertainment — 13.6%. Restaurant counts, restaurants and liquor licenses per capita, average Google restaurant ratings.

• Green space and parks — 13.6%. Share of residents within a 10-minute walk of a park, park counts, park acreage per capita.

• Education — 9.1%. Elementary school ratings from the Illinois State Board of Education.

• Safety — 9.1%. FBI violent and total offense rates per capita. Communities too small to report their own crime data were excluded from this category, with their other scores weighted more heavily.

• Proximity to the Loop — 9.1%. Shorter distance scores higher.

Read that Housing category again, because it's the one that matters here. It rewards appreciation — how much prices went up. It does not measure what a house costs. A town where the typical house runs $2 million and a town where it runs $300,000 can score identically if they appreciated at the same rate.

And there is no property tax measure anywhere in the eight categories. In Illinois. Where the tax line is frequently the difference between two houses being affordable and one of them not being.

That's not a knock on the magazine — a livability ranking and a buying decision are two different exercises, and it says up front what it's doing. It just means the list can't tell you the thing you actually need to know.

The column they left out

Here's the top 10 with market data added. The magazine's price column is the 2025 median single-family sale price from Midwest Real Estate Data. The rest comes from Redfin's county market reports covering the rolling three months from May through July 2026, which include all property types.

Rank	Town	Mag. median (SFH, 2025)	Redfin median (May–Jul 2026)	Days on market	Sold above list	Months of supply
1	Winnetka	$1.98M	$2,003,746 (+13.8%)	36	57.7%	1.4
2	Libertyville	$690,000	$651,174 (+1.7%)	41	55.4%	2.4
3	Glencoe	$1.70M	—	—	—	—
4	Arlington Heights	$567,000	$495,752 (+2.4%)	41	56.5%	2.0
5	Naperville	$700,000	$631,684 (+0.4%)	46	43.6%	2.6
6	Lake Forest	$1.38M	$1,399,299 (+1.4%)	50	49.5%	3.2
7	Geneva	$569,500	—	—	—	—
8	Highland Park	$855,600	$924,537 (+15.4%)	39	59.0%	1.8
9	Evanston	$823,800	$484,757 (−4.5%)	42	51.2%	1.9
10	Lisle	$606,900	$489,755 (+8.8%)	44	48.8%	2.5

Two blanks, and here's why. Redfin only publishes town-level figures for places with at least 50 sales in the three-month window, and Glencoe didn't clear it. Geneva sits in Kane County, which isn't part of the county series I used for every other town on this list. I'd rather leave two cells empty than mix sources and pretend the numbers line up.

For reference, over the same period: Cook County ran a $396,338 median, 49 days on market, 48.6% above list and 2.8 months of supply. DuPage County was $459,153, 45 days, 45.9% and 2.5 months. Lake County was $433,728, 47 days, 48.3% and 2.4 months. The national median was $407,730 with 49 days on market and 3.9 months of supply.

Five things the added column shows

1. Every town in the top 10 costs more than the county median

All ten. The cheapest single-family median on the list is Arlington Heights at $567,000, which is more than $170,000 above Cook County's overall median sale price. Nine of the ten sit above the DuPage figure too. That isn't a scandal — it's arithmetic. When your Housing score rewards appreciation, homeownership and low vacancy, you're describing places where houses hold value and people stay put, and those places cost more. The list is doing exactly what it was built to do. It just isn't a shopping list.

2. At the very top, the ranking and the market agree

Winnetka finished No. 1 and it backs it up on the market side: 36 days to contract, 57.7% of sales above asking, and 1.4 months of supply, which is about as tight as this region gets. The median climbed 13.8% year over year. Whatever the scorecard is picking up in Winnetka, buyers are picking it up too.

3. Lake Forest ranked No. 6 and has the softest market on the board

This is the most useful line in the table. Lake Forest scored 8.24 and landed in the top 10 — and its market is the slowest and loosest of the group: 50 days on market, 3.2 months of supply, and a median up just 1.4% from a year ago. Compare that to Highland Park, four spots below it at No. 8, sitting at 39 days, 1.8 months of supply and a 15.4% price gain.

If you're a buyer, that gap is leverage. More inventory and slower absorption in Lake Forest means more room to negotiate, more time to do inspections properly, and a better shot at getting a contingency accepted. If you're a seller in Lake Forest, it means pricing matters more this fall than the town's reputation suggests.

4. Naperville is the largest town on the list and the flattest

Naperville placed No. 5 with roughly 149,500 residents, by far the biggest town in the top 10. Its market data is the mildest: 43.6% of homes sold above asking — the lowest share in the group — and the median moved 0.4% in a year. That's not weakness so much as size. Naperville recorded 560 sales in the three-month window, more than any other town on this list, and big samples with lots of different housing stock tend to produce flatter, steadier numbers than small ones.

5. Evanston has two medians $339,000 apart, and that's the whole lesson

The magazine lists Evanston at $823,800. Redfin shows $484,757, down 4.5%. Both are correct. The magazine measured single-family houses only, in 2025. Redfin measured every property type — including a lot of condos — over three months in 2026.

Same town, same year, two numbers that tell you completely different stories depending on what you're buying. Lisle shows the same pattern ($606,900 versus $489,755), as do Arlington Heights and Naperville. If you take one thing from this post: a town median is a blended average of houses, townhomes and condos, and the moment you narrow it to what you're actually shopping for, the number changes.

The towns that didn't make the top 10

This is where a ranking with different weights would have produced a very different list.

• Wilmette had the fastest market in Cook County over the same three months — 33 days to contract, 63.8% of sales above asking, 1.4 months of supply and a median up 28.9% to $1,298,850. It is not in the magazine's top 10.

• Oak Park ranked No. 57. Its market: median $571,714, up 21.0% year over year, 41 days on market, 58.8% above list, 2.0 months of supply. On the numbers buyers are voting with, it's near the front of the pack.

• Wheaton was named the No. 10 hottest ZIP code in the entire country by Realtor.com this summer, and the top ZIP in Illinois. Redfin has it at $543,478, up 13.2%, with 60.4% of homes selling above list. Also not in the magazine's top 10.

• Hanover Park posted the highest above-list share in DuPage County at 65.4% — on a median of $329,835. Competition is not the same thing as price.

Three well-built rankings, three different answers. That's not any of them being wrong. It's three groups of people choosing to measure different things.

What's still missing: the tax column

Nothing in the eight categories touches property taxes, and in this state that's the biggest single omission for anyone doing real math. Two houses at the same price in two different Chicagoland towns can carry monthly tax lines hundreds of dollars apart, and that difference moves what a lender will approve far more than a walkability score does.

Rates also aren't frozen. The south and west suburban townships were reassessed this cycle, with those values landing on 2027 bills, and the City of Chicago comes up in 2027 for bills in 2028. I wrote about the assessor changeover and what it means for your bill here.

Before you fall for a town, pull the actual tax bill on the actual parcel. Not the estimate on the listing portal — the bill. It takes about four minutes and it has ended more than a few of my clients' crushes.

The honest case for and against rankings like this

The case for using it: it surfaces places you'd never have typed into a search bar. Libertyville at No. 2 is a real find for somebody who was only looking at the North Shore, and the magazine's own reporting notes you get materially more house there than in the towns immediately north of it. A transparent, published methodology beats a vibes-based list every time, and this one tells you exactly what it weighted.

The case against leaning on it: every weight is a choice someone made. Move Housing from 13.6% to 25%, or add an affordability measure, or add taxes, and the order changes — possibly a lot. The categories also lean toward things that scale with density and municipal budgets: restaurant counts, park acreage, transit access. And a town-level score tells you nothing about the specific block, the specific school boundary, or the specific house you're going to write an offer on.

To be clear about what this post is and isn't: none of these numbers are a verdict on any town as a place to live. Days on market and months of supply describe financing conditions, inventory and pricing behavior. They don't describe communities, and I'm not using them that way.

How to use this if you're buying

1. Shortlist from the ranking, then re-sort by supply. Months of supply is the single most useful number for a buyer. Under two months, come in strong and clean. Over three, you have room to ask for things.

2. Narrow the median to your property type. Ask for the median for single-family only, or condo only, in your price band. The blended town number will mislead you.

3. Pull the tax bill before you write an offer. Every time.

4. Check whether the seller's exemptions are inflating the current bill. Homeowner, senior and senior freeze exemptions don't transfer to you. The bill you inherit can be meaningfully higher than the one the seller is paying.

5. Compare two towns on total monthly cost, not price. Principal, interest, taxes and insurance. That's the real ranking.

How to use this if you're selling

1. Know your town's actual speed. If comparable homes are going in 39 days and yours is at 55, that's a pricing signal, not a patience problem.

2. Check the above-list share. In towns where more than half of sales clear asking, pricing slightly under recent comps tends to generate competition rather than leave money behind.

3. Don't price off the town median. It's blended across property types and, in smaller towns, built on very few sales.

4. Watch the rate backdrop. Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed at 6.71% on September 3, up from 6.66% the week before and 6.50% a year ago. Buyer budgets are a little tighter than they were last fall.

5. If your town made the list, say so in the marketing. It's free credibility and buyers are searching it right now.

A few caveats on the numbers

• The magazine's price column is 2025 single-family data from Midwest Real Estate Data. The Redfin column is all property types over May through July 2026. They are not apples to apples, which is exactly why I labeled both.

• Redfin's county market reports are compiled on a rolling three-month basis and only show towns with 50 or more sales. Redfin also discloses that these county updates are produced with the help of generative AI.

• Relisting a home resets the days-on-market clock, so town DOM figures can run slightly optimistic.

• Small towns produce noisy medians. Winnetka's figure rests on 68 sales; Naperville's on 560.

• None of this says anything about what your particular house is worth. That takes looking at your house.

What I'd charge to sell one of these

My listing commission is 1.25%. On Arlington Heights' current median of $495,752, that's about $6,197. On Naperville's $631,684, about $7,896. On the Winnetka median, about $25,047.

Two other things that come with it. If you find your own buyer — a neighbor, a coworker, someone from your kid's team — my Zero Commission Clause means you owe me nothing on the listing side. And you can cancel the listing agreement at any time, for any reason, with no penalty. I'd rather earn the second month than lock you into it.

What you get is the full package: professional photography, 3D Matterport tour, full MLS and online syndication, and someone who has closed over $100 million in Chicagoland sales handling the negotiation.

Curious what your house is actually worth in your town's current market? I'll pull the real comps — narrowed to your property type, not a blended town median — and send you a straight answer with no obligation. Call or text me at 312.882.9797.

Sources

• Chicago magazine, "The Best Suburbs to Live In. All 205 Ranked" (June/July 2026 issue), including the published methodology and category weights: chicagomag.com

• Redfin, "Cook County, IL Housing Market Update: July 2026," market data by city, rolling three-month period May–July 2026: redfin.com

• Redfin, "DuPage County, IL Housing Market Update: July 2026," market data by city: redfin.com

• Redfin, "Lake County, IL Housing Market Update: July 2026," market data by city: redfin.com

• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, September 3, 2026: freddiemac.com/pmms

• Realtor.com 2026 Hottest ZIP Codes, released August 2026 (Wheaton 60187 at No. 10 nationally).

• Median single-family sale prices cited by Chicago magazine are sourced to Midwest Real Estate Data for 2025.