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Two NAR reports landed this month with the same undertone: the national market is cooling. Existing-home sales fell for a second straight month in July, down 1.7%. Pending home sales, signed contracts, the leading indicator, fell 2.3% in July to the lowest level since January. NAR’s chief economist Lawrence Yun pointed to the obvious culprit: “The highest mortgage rates of the year hit right in the middle of summer, and that’s pulling back contract signings.” Read those two data points together and it sounds like the market nationally is losing steam. Then I pulled our corridor’s actual numbers, and it’s a different story entirely. |
| 1. Nationally, Homes Sit for 49 Days. Here, None of Our Eight Markets Break Two Weeks. |
Market time across the corridor, July 2026: Glen Ellyn 7 days, Wheaton and Warrenville 8, West Chicago 9, DuPage County overall, Lombard, and Carol Stream 10, Winfield 12. Every single tracked market is moving in under two weeks, nowhere close to the 49-day national pace behind this month’s “cooling” headlines. |
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Median Market Time by Town, DuPage Corridor — Single Family, July 2026 | Source: MRED/InfoSparks |
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Rolling 12-month median sale price, year-over-year, all eight tracked areas, and every one is positive:
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Months of supply, July 2026: Wheaton 1.1, Winfield 1.2, Carol Stream 1.3, Glen Ellyn 1.4, West Chicago 1.5, Lombard 1.7, DuPage overall 1.8, Warrenville 2.1. Every market still well under the 6-month threshold that defines a balanced market. And sellers are getting essentially all of it: every town sold at 100.0–100.7% of original list price in July. Underneath all of it, rates eased for a second straight week: Freddie Mac’s PMMS put the 30-year fixed at 6.65% for the week ending August 20, down from 6.67% and 6.69% the two weeks prior. No rate shock, no discounting, no slowdown, none of the ingredients behind the national headline showed up here. |
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The Bottom Line The national “cooling market” narrative is real, NAR’s own numbers show it, existing-home sales down two months running and pending contracts at their lowest point since January. But that story doesn’t describe Wheaton, Winfield, Glen Ellyn, or any of the seven other markets in this corridor. Here, homes are moving in a week to two weeks, prices are up across the board, supply hasn’t loosened, and sellers aren’t cutting prices to get deals done. If you’re waiting for the national slowdown to reach DuPage before you make a move, the data says that wait doesn’t have an end date on it, because it never started here. |
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