Market data — Q2 2026 flagship

Downtown Condos Are Selling Faster Than They Were a Year Ago — Larger Units Gained the Most

A downtown Chicago 2BR condo took a median 31 days to sell over the trailing 12 months, down from 42 days the year before — an 11-day drop. The improvement is sharper for larger units: 3BR condos went from a 57-day median to 41 days, a 16-day decrease. 1BR units moved least, from 33 days to 28.5.

The pattern shows up even more sharply in specific neighborhoods. In River North, 2BR highrise condos went from a 52.5-day median to 31 days — the largest year-over-year swing among neighborhoods with adequate sample size. In Gold Coast, 3BR highrise condos went from 92 days to 53.

Pricing power moved the same direction. Downtown 2BR condos sold at a median 99.27% of original list price over the trailing 12 months, up from 98.73% the year before. Sellers aren't just closing faster — they're closing closer to their original ask while doing it.

That combination — shorter time on market and pricing holding or improving — is the more decision-relevant read than either number alone. A market can speed up because sellers are cutting prices to move inventory; that's not what happened here. Sale-to-list held steady or ticked up while days-on-market fell, which points to genuine demand absorbing the unit mix that had been sitting, not panic pricing clearing it out.

The size gradient is the detail worth sitting with. If demand were uniformly stronger, every segment would move by roughly the same amount. Instead, 3BR and larger units — the segment with the thinnest buyer pool to begin with — improved the most. That's consistent with a buyer pool for bigger units that had been unusually cautious the year before and became more willing to commit, rather than a blanket downtown-wide acceleration.

For a seller, what counts as "normal" right now has shifted by unit size, and in the direction that helps larger units the most. If you're timing a listing and want to know what your unit's actual bedroom-count segment looks like against last year's — not the downtown-wide blend — a 30-minute call is enough to walk through where your building and unit size stand.

Roz Dupiton