Fox Valley Real Estate: Week of July 13–17, 2026

This was a week of two currents pulling against each other. Prices kept grinding higher — Kane County’s median is up 7.4% year-over-year and Kendall is up 5%, per Redfin — while rates ticked back up, with Freddie Mac’s 30-year at 6.55% on July 16, up from 6.49% the week before. The froth is gone but the market isn’t. Buyers are moving fast on anything priced right while running the payment math, so dated or overpriced listings sit and cut. The bigger story this summer isn’t resale price at all. It’s the wave of data centers, master-planned communities, and thousand-home subdivisions redrawing the growth map to our south and west.

Naperville

Still tight, fast, and seller-favored. Median list is around $662K (about $275 per square foot), inventory sits near 1.4 months, and the hottest segments are moving in roughly 15 days, per Homes by Marco. There were 39 sales the week of July 7–13, against 76 new listings the week prior, and new listings are down about 25% year-over-year. Demand is clearly outpacing supply here — the pinch is the whole story. Worth noting for higher-end sellers: downtown Naperville has been running near a $960K median over the last three months, up 28% year-over-year (Redfin), even as the rest of the market gets pickier.

Yorkville

Data centers dominate everything else. Two massive campuses are queued along the Eldamain corridor — Project Cardinal at 1,037 acres and 17M-plus square feet, and Project Steel at 540 acres, per DatacenterDynamics, with first-phase construction not starting until summer 2027. New this week: CyrusOne, on a separate 228-acre site, agreed to pay the city $15M up front on its first building permit, accept water-use limits, and shrink its footprint (Shaw Local, July 14) — a sign the city is learning to extract more before it approves. There’s over $91M in up-front developer money on the table across these deals, including $68.25M earmarked for school buildings (WSPY). But this isn’t settled. The updated Comprehensive Plan steering farmland toward industrial is advancing amid an active lawsuit, with the next court date July 24, and Rep. Jed Davis is pushing for a data-center referendum. If you own near those corridors, “nobody wants to live on data-center row” is becoming a live buyer objection, so watch how it prices in. On the residential side, the final phase of Grande Reserve townhomes is wrapping up.

Oswego

Kendall County is still the fastest-growing county in the state, and Oswego is building faster than most. Drake Group’s Polo Crossing — roughly 80 acres, 120 single-family homes and 200 townhomes — is moving through the pipeline, and the Breybourne cricket stadium PUD (stadium, restaurant, hotel) has first-phase approval, which is a genuine differentiator. The village is running a new Comprehensive Plan with CMAP through fall 2026. The wildcard is Gov. Pritzker’s statewide zoning proposal, which has village officials worried about losing local control — something to keep an eye on, because it could reshape how fast any of these approvals actually move.

Sugar Grove

The Grove (Crown Community, 760 acres at I-88 and Route 47) keeps rolling. Area 1 is 214 single-family homes on Merrill Road, built by M/I Homes, with first deliveries expected this year and full build-out around 1,400 residences. The 323-acre Grove Park business park already has a data center under contract. But the village is putting up guardrails: trustees now require special-use approval — public hearings and board votes — for data centers in limited-manufacturing zones (The Real Deal). One more local note from the early-July storms: parts of Sugar Grove took 8-plus inches of rain, so if you’re showing or selling out here, document your drainage, grading, and sump situation up front.

North Aurora and Aurora

For showings, plan around the North Aurora Road closure between Pennsbury and Frontenac — it stays in place through the end of July on utility delays, so route clients via Diehl Road. In Aurora, the downtown pivot from industrial to walkable mixed-use continues, and Continental broke ground on Springs at Aurora. Aurora’s median list is around $421K with about a month of inventory — still the local entry point.

Geneva and Batavia

Geneva’s median list is around $550K (about $268 per square foot), down roughly 7% year-over-year, with homes averaging about 18 days on market (Movoto). Batavia next door is running about $448K in typical value, up 3.9% year-over-year, and pending in roughly six days (Zillow) — which puts comparable Batavia homes $30–50K under Geneva. Batavia is also courting developers for four downtown parcels, including the Boardwalk Shops and the former First Baptist site. And just west in St. Charles, Pulte’s proposed Charles Farm would add about 2,000 homes on 970 acres — a 950-unit Del Webb 55-plus, 800-plus single-family, and around 200 townhomes. If approved, it reshapes Tri-Cities inventory and pricing for years. The Kombrink team has Tri-Cities open houses running July 18–19.

County and rate backdrop

Rates were the swing factor this week. Freddie Mac’s 30-year moved to 6.55%, and the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly conforming average hit 6.65% — the highest since August 2025 — with purchase applications down 7% week-over-week. The offset: June CPI, released July 14, showed inflation cooling to 3.5% from 4.2%, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020, though core stayed at 2.6%. One cool inflation print doesn’t move a 6.5% mortgage, but it’s the direction buyers want. On values, Kane is up 7.4% and Kendall up 5% year-over-year — appreciation on thin inventory, not a boom.

National watch: the ROAD to Housing Act is now law

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11, 2026 — automatically, after the 10-day clock ran out without President Trump’s signature. It passed with veto-proof margins (Senate 85-5, House 358-32) and is being called the largest federal housing package in a generation.

Supporters — NAR and the Bipartisan Policy Center among them — frame it as a rare bipartisan supply win: permitting and environmental streamlining, manufactured- and rural-housing fixes, and a cap barring institutional investors that own 350-plus single-family homes from buying more. Worth remembering NAR is an industry advocate with its own interest in more transactions, so I’d read their enthusiasm as a starting point, not a verdict.

Critics — Cato, City Journal, the Urban Institute — make a fair case the other way. Most of the supply tools are grants, pilots, and studies that only work if local councils opt in on zoning, so relief is gradual and uneven. HUD has to complete 124 separate actions with no new staffing money after last year’s cuts, the 350-home cap touches well under 1% of the market and carries build-to-rent carve-outs, and nothing in the law lowers your mortgage rate. A law is not a finished home.

My read: this matters more for the Fox Valley’s five-to-ten-year supply story than for anyone’s closing this fall. The towns already approving thousand-home plans and business parks are the ones positioned to use these tools; the rest depends on local follow-through.

If you’re weighing a move in the Fox Valley — whether that’s timing a Naperville sale into tight inventory, reading what the data-center fights mean for a Yorkville or Sugar Grove purchase, or figuring out whether Batavia gets you more house than Geneva — I’m happy to talk through what this week actually means for your situation.

Sources: Redfin, Homes by Marco, DatacenterDynamics, Shaw Local, WSPY, The Real Deal, Movoto, Zillow, Freddie Mac, Mortgage Bankers Association via CNBC, BLS via CNBC, NAR, Bipartisan Policy Center, Cato Institute, Urban Institute, City Journal, Fortune (NAHB, Census, John Burns), Continental Properties, Tri-Cities Central.