Find out how many home loans were applied for and issue or denied in your neighborhood 

This new data section on Chicago Cityscape is inspired by the joint WBEZ and City Bureau investigation, called "Where Banks Don't Lend", of home mortgage lending activity in Chicago. The investigation used data about applications for a new home mortgage collected by the federal government pursuant to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). 

The investigation found that the country's largest banks, and the ones with the most loans in Chicago, have disproportionately not lended in neighborhoods of color. Additionally, redlining and other discriminatory actions by lenders and real estate agents in the 20th century in Chicago led to contract buying as the only way Black people could "buy" homes. 

Here's how to access the home mortgage data:

• Do you want data for a specific address? Look up the address to get its Address Snapshot, and then scroll down until you see "Home mortgages"
• Doing research and you already know the Census tract number? Find it in Places Explorer, open its Place page, and then scroll down until you see "Home mortgages"

We love responding to member requests. 

One can now filter Cook County properties by their tax exemption status. All properties owned by governments, non-profit organizations, universities, and places of worship are exempt from paying property taxes.

Chicago Cityscape has many ways to find properties:

• Find properties in a Place – Use one of our existing 37,000 Places, or draw your own Personal Place.
• Find properties using Opportunity Finder
• Find properties near an address or known PIN using Address Snapshot

Zoning Dashboard has been a core feature for Address Snapshot reports of Chicago address, properties, and buildings, and it's time to change the name.

Zoning Dashboard has added more and more features over the years that it's become more like a "Zoning Assessment", wherein our system can automatically create limited zoning reports. 

What's new with Zoning Assessment?

1. All uses are shown

2. Parking requirements

Zoning Assessment can now describe parking requirements for residential uses at a given location. Parking requirements for non-residential uses require more inputs (like project scope, number of employees, size of the business or building) which currently can only be done in a personalized Zoning Assessment.

3. The latest map

This is a routine update, but our Chicago zoning map is current for all the rezonings adopted at the April and May 2020 City Council meetings.  

• Address Snapshot reports now show the most recent zoning districts, in addition to being able to show past zoning at that location
• Site Locator, our tool to find where in Chicago certain businesses or building types are allowed, has the latest map

4. Nothing - go look up an address

Now whenever you look up an Address Snapshot Property report (searching for or selecting a property's PIN), you'll see this map that shows the parcel's outlines and dimensions. 

Each side is measured, and the perimeter distance is shown. 

This information does not replace the need for a survey as it relies on an imperfect map of Cook County parcels – it is intended to give a property analyst an additional data point in their due diligence.

We've redesigned the TOD status section of Address Snapshot so readers can more quickly see the rules and benefits of Chicago's "Transit-Served Location" ordinance. 

The green checkmark is still there to indicate if a location is eligible for the TOD benefits, but now we've highlighted just how far a location is from the transit service that makes the site eligible. 

Plus, we're highlighting and summarizing the benefits into a few categories: 

• More units allowed
• Taller building allowed
• Less parking required

The TOD status section is a feature exclusive to those who've purchased an Address Snapshot report and our Cityscape Pro and Cityscape Enterprise members. 

Our Chicago cannabis maps have been updated with new locations of interest. These are locations about which individuals, property owners, lawyers, and cannabis companies have asked for a zoning opinion from the Chicago Zoning Administration. 

Today we added 32 new locations of interest for cannabis craft growers, infusers, processors, and cultivation centers. These appear on an exclusive zoning map to advise cannabis business owners on where it may be suitable to locate. 

Additionally, we updated details about 20 existing locations to add information about the interested parties and their attorneys. 

These cannabis features are an add-on that Cityscape Pro members can add to their monthly or annual membership. 

We updated the Incentives Checker to clarify what might be available at any given Address Snapshot, added an incentive (bringing the total we can check up to 25), and updated our database to add current locations. 

• New incentive: HUBZones. These are areas called "historically underutilized business zones" where the federal government has a minimum commitment of 3% of contract spending. 
• Now when you look up an Address Snapshot, we'll be more accurate about the number of financial & development incentives we can check for that location. No more checking for incentives we know are not available in that area. 
• The areas where New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) and Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) can be deployed has been updated for 2020. These areas are called Qualified Census Tracts and we have this information for the entire United States.
• Additionally, regarding LIHTC, the areas of "Difficult Development Areas", where applications for LIHTC can be scored higher, was updated for 2020.

Look up what incentives might be available at any address or parcel, based on its geography, using Address Snapshot.

We've updated our "PTAX" dataset to show three more months of property transactions. This includes sales and transfers that are subject to the Real Estate Transfer Tax. With this addition, Chicago Cityscape now has 5.25 years of property transactions.

Look up any Address Snapshot in Cook County and we'll show you nearby transactions.

Look up any Place Snapshot in Cook County and we'll show you (nearly) all of the transactions that took place within that area.

Stats

These statistics consider only those transactions with a full consideration of greater than $1.

According to our analysis of the new data, there were 17,759 transactions recorded in Cook County in the first quarter of 2020. Of these, 49.8 percent were in Chicago. This lines up with the average number of Cook County transactions in Chicago, at 51.2 percent. 

Looking at rolling 4 quarter periods, there was an increase of 0.31 percent in transactions in Chicago in 2019 Q2 through 2020 Q1 over transactions in 2019 Q1 through 2019 Q4.