Chicago joins the city housing-market series

The fourth page of the ten-city series, and the first city-first page in it. Chicago is the total-cost-trap city: the sticker price is cheap but the carrying cost is not, because the City’s new-buyer effective property tax runs about 2.0% (modeled, above the documented 1.69% Civic Federation figure), roughly 3.6 times Phoenix’s. On our tested engine, a $380,000 Chicago home carries a higher monthly payment (about $2,794) than a $457,817 Phoenix home (about $2,739), and a new four-bar cross-city tax chart puts Chicago beside Austin, Tampa, and Phoenix with a whisker to the 4.74% south-suburb extreme. The page adds the condo carrying-cost trap (the average $425-a-month assessment shown as a visible layer on PITI) and the scarcity-and-appreciation paradox (Chicago led all 20 Case-Shiller cities in recent growth yet has among the weakest long-run appreciation, and the gains are nominal). The beta Market Balance Score reads the family’s first seller’s-market band, and the scorecard is its first red-heavy one. The 2.0% tax rate is labeled modeled everywhere, and the south-suburb spread is framed as a documented equity problem.