Every summer, as the weather heats up, so does Chicago’s rental market.
The season typically brings new renters to the city, and as current residents’ leases expire, and college students and families alike decide to move before the start of the school year, there’s an influx of people looking for apartments, condos and houses to rent.
But more prospective renters means greater demand, and greater demand means higher prices.
In the run up to the summer season, asking rents can see a somewhat drastic spike. From March to June, the median asking monthly rent in Chicago went up by more than $120, a 7.1% increase in just three months, according to data from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage.
For a unit that might have rented for $1,000 in March, by June, that same listing could have gone up to $1,120 a month — representing a 12% increase in the listed price.
“Rents are on the rise in Chicago,” said Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin. “They’re actually up quite dramatically from last year at 11%, and what that means is that rents are largely unaffordable to the median earner in Chicago.”
In June, the typical cost of rent in Chicago was $2,200 a month, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, which measures changes in asking rents over time.
For a city renter to comfortably afford that price — meaning spending no more than 30% of their income on housing — they’d need to make $88,000 a year.
“There’s been a huge increase in that income that you need to have in order to have your rent cost, your housing cost, considered affordable,” said Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.
The good news is wages are rising across the Chicagoland. The metro area has seen a 4.3% increase in compensation year-over-year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and just this month the city’s minimum wage was bumped up to $16.20 an hour.
But despite these boosts, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living.
The Windy City saw an 11.3% hike in rent prices from June 2023 to June 2024, the country’s fourth-biggest increase year-over-year, behind Virginia Beach, Virgina, Cincinnati and Washington D.C., according to Redfin.
Additionally, other living expenses are on the rise. Food costs are up 1.5% and energy prices have jumped 2% in the last 12 months, BLS data shows.
“Wages are slowing…and if wage growth is slowing faster than rent growth, that poses some affordability challenges,” said Divounguy.
Many Chicagoans are feeling these affordability challenges.
“It just is outrageous that it’s gotten this expensive,” said Alexa Kosior, a social media marketing manager who’s been living and renting in the city for almost three years now.
Like almost half of all Chicago households, Kosior is rent-burdened, meaning housing costs account for more than 30% of her income. Currently, rent payments make up 50% of her monthly expenses.
In 2022, 48.5% of all Chicago households were rent-burdened, according to Tribune analysis of data published by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“I’m paying over a paycheck for rent. I make an average amount, I don’t make anything crazy. I’m not, you know, struggling. But when you think about how much money things cost now, for clothes, for food, for everything, it just goes up.”
In June, when Kosior found out rent was going up on her 350-square-foot studio apartment in West Loop, she posted a TikTok to voice her frustration.
“I just got the email telling me that my rent was increased to $1,850,” she says in the video, pausing to cover her mouth in mime shock.
She continues the video showing followers around her studio, fitted with little more than a bed, table and chairs, mini kitchenette and bathroom.
“I don’t know how I’m going to afford living in Chicago anymore,” Kosior says toward the end of the TikTok. “Because I’ll tell you right now…I can’t afford an $1,800 apartment.”
@alexakosior Looks like Im moving!!!😂😭 #chicago #chicagotiktok #chicagocheck #chicagowest #chicagoapartment #chicagoapartments #apartment #scam #fyp #viral #foryou
The video, captioned “Looks like Im moving!!!,” amassed close to 600,000 views, more than 30,000 likes and thousands of comments. In an interview with the Tribune, the 25-year-old discussed her viral video and the overwhelming response to it.
“I think for the people that were really resonating with it, it’s eye-opening to see what people are paying. I think it’s kind of the curiosity factor of seeing what [rent] is like in Chicago.”
And for the local crowd?
“Honestly, I think it’s because so many people are struggling with the same thing,” she said.
“Finding affordable units in my price range has been a real challenge,” said Andrew Szkolnik, a Chicago renter with a budget of $1,000 a month.
Szkolnik, who currently lives in Wicker Park, says the apartment search this summer has been difficult and time consuming, dedicating at least an hour a day to looking for available units.
Living everywhere from Washington D.C. to Durham, North Carolina, and Madrid, the Los Angeles native attests that looking for a new lease in Chicago this year has been more difficult than any other time in his life.
“It’s been more challenging. It’s certainly been a longer process than the previous rental experiences that I had in other cities.”
Some of these struggles are due in part to Chicago’s highly competitive summer rental market. As more residents look for new rentals in the existing housing stock, prices tend to creep up, as in any supply and demand scenario.
“The vacancy rate is very low compared to other parts of the country. Then at the same time, in the summer most people tend to move,” Divounguy said. “So more people moving is going to cause a little bit of pressure on the demand side, and if you start off from a place where you don’t have a ton of vacancies, then that pressure will turn into higher rent growth.”
Average costs will continue to trend up throughout the summer, with prices typically peaking every year around July and August.
Hover over or click on the chart to see the typical rent price in Chicago every month since January 2015.
Because of this, if you have the option, some experts recommend waiting to sign a new lease until after the peak summer season.
Rent prices see the biggest dropoff in November or December, so if you don’t mind moving in the cold — and possibly in the snow and slush — that might be a better time to move for some renters.
“If it’s more about finding a deal than finding something perfect, then I think you are probably going to find a better deal in the winter,” said Fairweather.
Though for some renters, waiting to move isn’t an option. For those folks, Chicago housing experts and real estate agents recommend looking in different neighborhoods, with varying levels of affordability throughout the city’s 59 ZIP codes.
As of June, the 60607 ZIP code, located on the Near West Side of Chicago where Kosior resides, had the second highest rent prices in the city at nearly $2,730 a month.
Meanwhile, adjacent ZIP codes have slightly more moderate prices. In 60612, covering the United Center neighborhood and parts of Garfield Park, rent was $2,237. In 60608, encompassing the Lower West Side, Little Italy and Bridgeport neighborhoods, standard rent costs were almost $1,000 a month lower at $1,770.
Click on the map or search by ZIP code to see the standard rent price in that area.
For Kosior, who says her rent has gone up more than $300 in two years, this recent hike was more than she could muster.
“Yeah, I am definitely going to be moving,” Kosior said, explaining that she hopes to find a one bedroom apartment somewhere in the city that’s more in her budget and worth the cost.
“I don’t want to be spending nearly as much as I’m paying now. I want to be able to save more money and put money towards doing other things, and not have to be spending so much on rent.”
