Why Forest Park's Home Prices Haven't Caught Up to Oak Park and River Forest
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Three suburbs sit side by side west of Chicago, sharing a stock of century-old bungalows and foursquares that could pass for each other's blocks. In 2024, two of them took off. River Forest's median sale price jumped 24 percent to $980,000. Oak Park climbed nearly 19 percent to $623,000. Forest Park, sitting between the other two, came in close to flat. The broader Chicago metro gained roughly 8 percent on single-family homes that year, which means Forest Park didn't just lag its neighbors, it lagged the region.
That gap isn't a mystery about the housing stock or the commute. It's a story about who is actually selling in Forest Park right now, and about two municipal decisions the village has been sitting on for years, one of them for a quarter century.
In most western suburbs, a hot market feeds itself. A young family sells its starter home to a slightly older family trading up, freeing that starter home for the next buyer in line. Each sale creates the conditions for the next one, and prices climb block by block.
Forest Park isn't running on that cycle. The homes coming to market there skew toward estate sales, downsizers, and owners selling because they have to, not because they're chasing a bigger house nearby. Without a steady run of move-up sellers, there's no cascading demand to push prices up the way it has in Oak Park and River Forest.
That doesn't mean nothing is moving. Days on market in Forest Park fell roughly 45 percent compared to March 2025, according to listing data cited by the Forest Park Review in an April 2026 analysis of the local market. Homes are selling faster. They're just not selling for more, because each sale isn't setting up the next buyer to compete for the house down the street.
The village's own building department has said the quiet part out loud. At a May 2025 council meeting on the residential zoning code, Director of the Department of Health and Safety Steve Glinke described the current buyer pool this way:
"Our buying demographic right now is young professionals with no kids and empty nesters from Oak Park and River Forest."
That's not a knock on Forest Park. It's a description of a market that's attracting a different kind of buyer than the one driving prices up a mile away, and it helps explain why the move-up chain isn't forming.
Forest Park has been trying to update its residential zoning code since at least 2024, and it kept stalling. Glinke told the council that 76 percent of the village's lots don't conform to the current code, many of them the 25-foot lots that define blocks across the village. The proposed rewrite would raise allowable impervious lot coverage in low-density R1 districts from 40 percent to 50 percent, push it to 80 percent with no minimum setback in high-density R3 districts, and let two-family dwellings into R1 zones where they're currently barred. Commissioners postponed a vote in late 2024 over questions about stormwater and density, and residents were still airing concerns about the rewrite at a town hall the Review reported on in late April 2026.
Until that code is settled, a builder or a homeowner looking to add a unit or reconfigure a lot is working against rules everyone agrees are outdated but nobody has finished replacing. That kind of uncertainty doesn't show up in a listing description, but it shapes what gets built and what doesn't.
The other stalled decision sits on 11 acres next to the Altenheim, a nonprofit senior housing campus at 7824 Madison Street. The village bought that land from the Altenheim in 2001 for $3.6 million with vague plans to develop it. A quarter century later, it's still undecided.
The land is currently restricted by covenant to R1 or R2 uses: single-family homes, two-family dwellings, townhouses, or public parks. An 11-member advisory committee spent 2022 and 2023 gathering input and recommended R2 housing plus denser development near the CTA Blue Line terminal, but residents said the process hadn't included enough public input, and the recommendation went nowhere. In May 2026, an unsolicited proposal from a new developer pitching one-, two-, and three-bedroom units reopened the debate, but commissioners pushed back on skipping a formal bidding process. The village brought on a new planner, Pete Losue of Teska Associates, in May 2026 after its previous consultant quit over stalled projects, and started monthly council discussions on the parcel in August 2026, the first time the issue has had a standing spot on the agenda.
Commissioner Maria Maxham's read on the pace, from a July 2026 council meeting, was blunt: "We've made zero progress on this." Weeks later, after another round of the same conversation, she told the Review it still felt like starting over.
The clearest sign of what the village will actually move on came a few weeks after that. At an August 24, 2026 meeting, commissioners approved a nearly $750,000 engineering contract to design underground water reservoirs on part of the Altenheim site, an estimated $13 million project made urgent by a deteriorating ceiling below the Howard Mohr Community Center. The village found the will to act fast on that. The housing question, which has been open since 2001, is still waiting on a shared vision.
If you're weighing Forest Park against Oak Park or River Forest, the price-per-square-foot gap is real right now, and it isn't closing on its own. It closes, if it closes, when two specific things happen: the residential zoning code rewrite gets finished, and the village settles on a request for proposals or a request for qualifications for the Altenheim land instead of talking about it monthly.
There's one more variable worth watching. Mayor Rory Hoskins has pointed to the Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act, which passed in June 2026, as something that could affect transit-adjacent development near the Blue Line terminal. He was appointed to that board in July 2026. It's early, and nothing about it changes the zoning covenant on its own, but it's the kind of regional policy shift that could eventually give the village more leverage in the Altenheim conversation.
DePaul University's Institute for Housing Studies projected in late 2025 that Chicago metro home prices would rise close to 5 percent through 2026. Whether Forest Park captures its share of that, according to the Review's own reporting, depends on whether the zoning question gets resolved and whether the buyer mix shifts back toward the kind of move-up family that creates cascading demand. Neither is on a fixed timeline. For a buyer, that makes Forest Park a bet on municipal follow-through, not a bet on the market catching up by itself.
If you want to see how that plays out against the two villages it's most often compared to, our comparison of Forest Park and Oak Park walks through what the day-to-day differences actually look like.
A flat comp isn't a signal that your home is priced wrong. Faster days on market alongside flat prices means buyers are still showing up and still closing, they're just not competing with a move-up neighbor for the same house. Pricing strategy in Forest Park right now should account for a market that rewards a clean, well-prepared listing rather than one that rewards bidding pressure. If you're weighing whether now is the right time to list, a current home valuation gives you a clearer read than a comp pulled from a village with a different buyer pool.
Will Forest Park prices eventually catch up to Oak Park and River Forest? It depends on two things the village controls directly: finishing the residential zoning code rewrite and settling on a development path for the Altenheim parcel. Neither has a set date as of August 2026.
Does the stalled zoning code affect homeowners who want to add on or convert to a two-flat? It can. With 76 percent of village lots not conforming to the current code, additions and conversions on standard 25-foot lots are often handled case by case through zoning relief until the rewrite is finalized.
What's actually happening with the Altenheim land right now? As of August 2026, the village holds monthly discussions on the parcel, has hired a new planner, and has committed part of the site to a water reservoir project. No request for proposals or qualifications has gone out yet, and the covenant still restricts the land to R1 or R2 uses unless the Altenheim agrees otherwise.
Forest Park's flat prices, Oak Park's steady climb, and River Forest's surge are all readable once you know where to look. If you're weighing these three villages against each other, or trying to figure out what a specific stalled decision means for a specific address, Gagliardo Group can walk you through the comps block by block. Search All Homes to see what's actually on the market in Forest Park, Oak Park, and River Forest today.