What's My Home Worth Right Now? A Seller's Guide to Pricing It Right This Fall
"What's my home worth?" is probably the question I get asked most often, and this fall the honest answer is a little more nuanced than it was a year ago. Values across DuPage County are still rising, but the market dynamics that support pricing have shifted enough that getting your listing price right at the outset matters more than it did during the peak of the spring rush.
Here's the backdrop. County-wide, the median sale price in August 2026 was $448,499, up 4.8% from a year earlier — so home values, broadly speaking, are still climbing. But a few other indicators suggest buyers have a bit more leverage than they did last year. Months of supply rose to 2.5, up from 2.1, meaning it would take somewhat longer to sell through all the current inventory at the current sales pace. The share of homes selling above their list price dropped to 40.3%, down more than four percentage points year over year, and the average sale-to-list ratio slipped just under 100%, from 100.3% a year ago. Homes are also sitting a bit longer — a median of 51 days on market in August, four days more than last year.
None of this means values are falling. It means the market has moved from a period where almost any reasonable price would generate a bidding war, toward one where accurate pricing does most of the work of attracting strong offers. In a market like this one, an overpriced listing doesn't just sell for less than it might have — it often sells for less than it would have if it had been priced correctly from day one, because extra time on market tends to make buyers wonder what's wrong with a home, even when nothing is.
So how should you actually think about pricing your home this fall? Start with truly comparable recent sales — homes similar in size, condition, and location that sold in the last one to three months, not listings that are still active and unsold, and not sales from the spring when the market looked different. Then layer in what's currently competing for the same buyer pool: if there are three other homes on your street or in your price range right now, your pricing and presentation need to hold up against theirs, not against an abstract sense of what your home 'should' be worth.
It's also worth being cautious about relying solely on automated home value estimates, like a Zillow 'Zestimate' or similar tool. These can be a reasonable starting point for a very rough sense of value, but they're generated by algorithms working off public data and don't account for your home's actual condition, recent updates, or the nuances of your specific street or school attendance boundary. A tool like that simply can't replace a walk-through and a comparative market analysis built from real, current local sales data.
If you're weighing whether now is the right time to sell — in Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, Carol Stream, Bloomingdale, Lisle, Downers Grove, Roselle, Villa Park, or anywhere nearby — I'd be glad to put together a free, personalized comparative market analysis for your home. It's a much more accurate starting point than any online estimate, and there's no obligation attached to getting one.
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