If you pulled up Downtown Northbrook's housing numbers this year, you probably did a double take. The median sale price fell 34.4% year over year in the three months ending January 2026, dropping to $707,000. In the same window, the median price per square foot went the other direction entirely, climbing 34.1%.
Those two numbers cannot both be telling you that homes got cheaper. They aren't. What they're telling you is that the mix of what's selling in Downtown Northbrook changed underneath the median, and the reason is not a cooling market. It's three separate builders adding new attached housing to the same few blocks at the same time.
The Number That Doesn't Match
A falling median next to a rising price per square foot is a classic sign of mix shift, not price decline. It happens when the type of home selling changes even if no individual home's value drops. Picture a run of smaller, newer townhomes closing alongside a handful of older single-family homes. The blended median can fall even as every category gets more expensive, because a $2,300-square-foot new townhome at a premium price per foot still has a lower total price tag than a 3,500-square-foot older colonial a few blocks over.
Downtown Northbrook is a small enough geography that a handful of closings can swing the median hard in either direction. Zoom out to the village as a whole and the picture looks calmer. Northbrook's median sale price across all home types was $749,000 in October 2025, up 23.9% from the year before, with homes averaging three offers and selling in about 54 days. That's a market with real, broad-based demand. The wild swing shows up specifically in the small downtown pocket where new construction is concentrated.
Three Builders, One Small Stretch of Shermer Road
Here's what's actually happening on the ground. Chicago-based Lexington Homes opened Gateway, a 25-townhome community at 1181 Shermer Road, in mid-2025. It sold more than 30% of its homes at the grand opening and, according to the builder, is now nearly sold out. Base prices at launch started in the mid-$700,000s.
A year later, Lexington announced a second project just up the street. Northbrook Row, at 1825 Shermer Road, will bring 53 homes to the market this fall: 33 single-family rowhomes ranging from 2,304 to 2,454 square feet, plus 20 attached Mews-series townhomes along Stanley Street ranging from 1,954 to 2,278 square feet. Base prices start in the low $800,000s. The community falls within Northbrook-Glenview School District 30 for elementary and middle school, with Glenbrook North High School for the high school years.
Elsewhere in Northbrook, Brookfield Properties made its own move. The owner of the 100-acre Northbrook Court mall property at 1515 Lake Cook Road had spent years planning a mixed-use overhaul combining retail and residential. In 2025, the village approved a change in sequencing: Brookfield would build the residential piece, apartments, row houses, and townhomes, before touching the retail redevelopment. That residential phase was projected to break ground as early as this summer, though as of the village's last public update in December 2025 the two sides were still working out details, so its precise start this year remains an open question.
Three builders, three separate projects, all adding attached housing to the same small submarket inside about a twelve-month window. That's the mechanism behind the confusing median.
| Project | Location | Units | Price Point | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gateway | 1181 Shermer Road | 25 townhomes | Launched mid-$700,000s | Nearly sold out |
| Northbrook Row | 1825 Shermer Road | 53 homes (33 rowhomes, 20 townhomes) | Low $800,000s | Pre-sales begin fall 2026 |
| Northbrook Court residential phase | 1515 Lake Cook Road | Apartments, row houses, townhomes | Not yet released | Projected to break ground as early as this summer; timeline still being finalized as of Dec. 2025 |
What the Village's Own Words Reveal
The Northbrook Court piece has a wrinkle worth understanding if you're weighing a home near it. The redevelopment agreement between the village and Brookfield ties financial incentives directly to retail performance, not just to breaking ground. As Northbrook Village President Kathryn Ciesla put it when the sequencing shift was announced, the agreement protects taxpayers by requiring half of the retail space to be leased before incentives are accessed.
That structure means the housing at Northbrook Court is likely to arrive well ahead of any retail transformation. If part of your interest in that stretch of Lake Cook Road is the promise of new shops and restaurants, the timeline for that piece is tied to a leasing benchmark Brookfield hasn't hit yet. The homes will be real. The walkable retail district some buyers are picturing is a later, conditional phase.
What Gateway's Own Price Tag Shows
If you want a cleaner read on true demand than a blended median, look at what one builder charged for the same product a year apart. Gateway opened with base prices in the mid-$700,000s. Current listings for that same community are priced from just under $970,000 for comparable square footage. That's not a market cooling. That's a builder raising prices because the first batch sold faster than expected and the second batch is priced to what buyers just proved they'd pay.
Northbrook Row's low-$800,000s starting price, announced a year after Gateway's mid-$700,000s launch, points the same direction. The floor is rising even as the downtown median headline looks like it's falling.
What to Compare Instead
If you're comparing a new construction townhome to an older single-family resale in Downtown Northbrook right now, the median sale price for the immediate area is not a useful yardstick. It's being distorted by the sheer volume of new attached product entering a small geography all at once. Two things are more reliable.
Price per square foot holds up better because it strips out the size differences between a compact new townhome and a larger, older resale home on the same block. That's the number that rose 34.1% while the median fell, and it's a more honest signal of where values are actually headed.
Builder pricing history is the other. When the same company sells the same floor plan twice within a year and raises the price by tens of thousands of dollars, that tells you more about real demand than a single quarter's median ever will.
None of this means resale single-family homes in Downtown Northbrook are losing value. It means the new construction wave is loud enough right now to distort the headline number that portals show you first. Anyone shopping this stretch of Northbrook this fall should expect more inventory, more builder marketing, and a median price that keeps behaving strangely for a while longer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the falling median mean Downtown Northbrook is a buyer's market right now? Not based on what the data shows. Village-wide, homes are averaging three offers and selling in about 54 days as of October 2025, which points to sustained competition rather than a softening market. The falling median in the small downtown pocket reflects a shift in what's selling, not a drop in what buyers are willing to pay.
Will the Northbrook Court redevelopment bring new retail to the area soon? Not on the same timeline as the housing. The incentive agreement requires half of the retail space to be leased before financial incentives kick in, so the residential phase is likely to be finished and occupied well before any retail transformation takes shape.
Is now a good time to compare a new townhome against an older resale home nearby? It's a reasonable time to look, but compare on price per square foot and recent builder pricing history rather than the area's median sale price, which is currently skewed by the volume of new construction closing in a small geography.
Sorting out what a swinging median actually means for your specific situation, whether you're comparing a brand-new Lexington townhome to a resale colonial three streets over, is exactly the kind of question worth walking through before you write an offer. Audra Casey tracks these shifts block by block across Northbrook and the North Shore. Get the Northbrook Market Report and pre-market access to see what's actually moving before it hits the portals.
