Why Northbrook Suddenly Has More New Construction Than the Rest of the North Shore

As of mid-2026, Northbrook's median sale price is down 10.5 percent year over year. Look at that number on its own and you'd assume the market cooled off. It didn't. Homes are still moving in around 47 days and drawing an average of four offers, according to Redfin's tracking of the local market. A falling median next to a tight, fast-moving market is not a contradiction. It's a clue. And it's the same clue that just convinced a national mall developer to start building apartments before it touches a single storefront.

If you're cross-shopping Northbrook against other North Shore suburbs right now, that clue matters more than the median itself.

The Math That Doesn't Add Up (On Purpose)

A price drop is supposed to mean less competition. In Northbrook it hasn't worked out that way. Buyers are still submitting multiple offers and closing in under seven weeks, which only happens when there isn't enough for sale to go around. Zoom into Downtown Northbrook specifically and the picture gets stranger: over the three months ending January 2026, the median sale price there was $707,000, down 34.4 percent from the same stretch a year earlier. That's not a market correcting. That's a market with so few transactions that one or two high-end sales rolling off the comparison period can swing the median by a third. Movoto separately clocked Northbrook's town-wide median sale price at $647,000 for September 2025, while Realtytrac lists the median asking price at $782,952. The gap between what sellers are asking and what buyers are actually paying, and the gap between one platform's numbers and another's, says less about where prices are headed than about how few homes are actually changing hands right now.

Illinois REALTORS' 2026 forecast, built on DePaul's Institute for Housing Studies modeling, projects closed sales across the Chicago metro up 5.1 percent this year. Most forecasters expect mortgage rates to hold somewhere in the 6 to 6.4 percent range for the year. Demand isn't the problem. Supply is. And that's exactly the gap two builders and one mall owner have decided to fill at the same time, in the same town, in the same eighteen months.

Two Developments, One Signal

Chicago-based Lexington Homes opened Gateway Northbrook, a 25-unit townhome community at 1181 Shermer Road, with base prices starting in the mid $700,000s. It sold fast. Eight homes went under contract at the grand opening alone, first deliveries began this spring, and by August 2026 the company describes the community as nearly sold out.

Lexington didn't wait to see how that played out before committing to a second project. In August 2026 the builder announced Northbrook Row, a 53-home community just down Shermer Road at 1825 Shermer Road, combining 33 single-family rowhomes with 20 townhomes from its Mews series. Base prices start in the low $800,000s. Site work and pre-sales are expected to begin this fall.

Lexington Homes principal Jeff Benach put the logic plainly when announcing the second project:

"We know this area of Northbrook very well, as we opened our Gateway Northbrook townhome community a year ago right down the street and are now nearly sold out... interest should be very high for these 53 homes as the Chicagoland area continues to see a shortage in housing inventory, especially new-construction options."

That's a builder reading the same signal you'd read off the Redfin numbers: not enough resale inventory, strong enough demand to absorb a second project before the first one even finished closing.

The Mall Is Making the Same Bet

Here's where it stops being a coincidence about one road in Northbrook and starts looking like a pattern about the whole town. Brookfield Properties, which has owned the 100-acre Northbrook Court mall site at 1515 Lake Cook Road since 1995, spent years planning to lead its redevelopment with retail and open-air dining, then layer in housing later. In March 2025, the village board approved a reversal of that sequence. Brookfield will now build the residential component first: a mix of apartments, row houses, and townhomes, according to reporting from The Real Deal and NBC Chicago.

The reason is the same one driving Lexington's expansion. High interest rates and a national retail slowdown have made it hard to underwrite new shopping centers, while suburban apartment and attached-home financing has stayed comparatively easy to secure given strong rent growth and investor appetite for the product type. Northbrook Village President Kathryn Ciesla explained how the village protected itself in the deal:

"The agreement protects taxpayers by requiring 50% of retail to be leased before incentives are accessed."

In other words, Brookfield gets to build housing on its own dime first, but the tax increment financing and sales tax rebates tied to the project stay locked until retail leasing hits that 50 percent mark. Three separate capital sources, three separate decision-makers, all landed on the identical sequence in the same window: houses first, everything else later.

The last public reporting on the project didn't specify when Northbrook Court's residential construction would actually break ground or exactly where on the site it would sit. That's still an open question worth watching rather than a firm date to plan around.

What This Actually Means If You're Comparing Towns

If you're weighing Northbrook against another North Shore suburb, the presence of an active new-construction pipeline is itself a data point, not just an amenity. It tells you where builders currently believe the financing works, which is often a better read on near-term supply than a median price that a handful of transactions can swing by a third.

For a buyer, the practical tradeoffs are straightforward. New construction removes you from the four-offer bidding environment entirely, but it comes with its own math: Gateway's HOA runs $492 a month covering lawn care, grounds, and snow removal, a fixed cost that a comparable resale townhome might not carry. Base prices are exactly that, a floor before options and upgrades, so the $749,990 entry point at Gateway or the low-$800,000s at Northbrook Row will move higher once a buyer starts selecting finishes. Timeline matters too. Gateway is delivering now. Northbrook Row is still in the pre-sale and site-work stage heading into fall 2026, which means a reservation today is a bet on a home that likely won't close for a while.

There's also a slower-moving effect worth tracking rather than assuming. If new construction pulls in the downsizers and empty nesters who might otherwise have competed for a specific slice of resale inventory, that could ease pressure on some resale product types over the next year or two. It's too early to call that a trend. It's the kind of thing a buyer comparing towns should keep an eye on rather than bank on.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Decide

Is Northbrook Row taking reservations yet? As of August 2026, Lexington Homes was collecting names for an interest list ahead of site work and pre-sales beginning this fall. Pricing and specific delivery dates weren't finalized at that point.

Will Northbrook Court have homes for sale soon? Not immediately. The village and Brookfield have confirmed the residential phase will come first, but as of the last public reporting on the project, neither a construction start date nor the exact footprint on the 100-acre site had been announced.

Does new construction mean resale prices in Northbrook will drop? Not necessarily, and not on the timeline these projects are moving. Gateway's 25 homes and Northbrook Row's 53 add up to fewer than 80 units entering a market where inventory is already thin. It's meaningful relief at the margin, not a flood.

If you're trying to figure out whether Northbrook's resale market, its new-construction options, or something in between fits what you're actually trying to do, that's a conversation worth having before you start touring. The JG Group works this market block by block, including the Shermer Road corridor where all of this is happening at once, and can walk you through what a base price, an HOA line item, and a pre-sale timeline actually mean for your budget. Request a free consultation and we'll help you read the market the way the builders already are.