Property Finder enhancements save steps for finding sold properties and properties by age

Two enhancements to Property Finder save time searching and browsing for properties in Chicago and Cook County. 

1. When filtering for properties that have sold (in a given time period, or at any time), the sale details will be shown in the results. No longer do you need to open the Property Report and look for the sales details – this saves one or two extra steps, depending on the level of detail you were looking for. 

2. It's possible to filter by building age, using new data from the Cook County Assessor's Office. Find the building age filter by selecting the "reveal additional filters" link at the bottom of the Property Finder filters. 

Like all Property Finder filters, the two can be used together!

Recap of Chicago Cityscape's Q1 Lunch Break Update on April 18, 2023

Watch the 23-minute video recording of our latest Lunch Break Update, during which we demonstrate some of the new features we published during Q1 2023. 

Use this timecodes guide to skip amongst the four platform updates:

  • 1.a. Finding new development opportunities, vacant building registry: 3:25
  • 1.b. Finding new development opportunities, brownfields: 6:11
  • 2. New building permits filters (topics, tags, and civic projects): 9:00
  • 3. Aerial and historic maps: 14:12
  • Audience question about aerial maps: 18:08
  • 4. Public sector investments (TIF, NOF, community development grant, proposed TIF-funded projects): 19:40
  • Summary: 23:09

ADU news you can use for May 2023

Last year’s ADU citywide expansion bill was among the majority of unadopted ordinances killed in City Council yesterday, but new 44th Ward Alderperson Lawson introduced a replacement bill . The Chicago Department of Housing is hiring a “housing development coordinator” who will split their time b...

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The new ward boundaries are now the default in Chicago Cityscape

Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson and 14 new alderpersons (including three elected for the first time after being appointed) will be sworn in on May 15, 2023. Chicago Cityscape has already transitioned its database to show the new ward boundaries by default. 

The old ward boundaries can no longer be used for any functions – such as submitting zoning change applications – as the final City Council meeting for the current council composition had its final meeting on Wednesday. 

Notifications have already been updated. Anyone who subscribed to a ward's Place Report is now subscribed to changes that happen in the new boundary. 

In searches, the new/current ward boundaries will also be the first to appear in search results using the syntax "Chicago ward". The old boundaries will appear as "Chicago ward (2011 map)". Eventually, we will move the 2011 map into the historical wards layer. 

screenshot of the search results for an alderperson's last name


Our amenities database is a little more complete

Community development corporations, real estate brokers, and people looking for developable property use our Amenities & Social infrastructure database to see what's nearby as well as what's not nearby.

Today we updated our Amenities & Social infrastructure database to count pharmacies as part of the summary of essential community amenities within a one-mile walk, and we include more grocery stores

Department stores with grocery departments have been added to the database. This includes Target and Walmart stores, which were not always included in the database and thus never counted as grocery stores. With a little tweak, Target and Walmart stores with grocery departments are now shown.

Previously, pharmacies were included in the map and data table but they were not counted in the summary of which community assets were within a one-mile walk of the Property Report a user looked up. Now they are!

Contribute your knowledge

Help us keep our amenities & social infrastructure database up to date. 

If you can edit directly in OpenStreetMap, we invite you to do that. Otherwise, please use the red "contact us" button to tell us...

  • where a new community asset or business has opened and needs to be added to the map
  • where a business or community asset has shuttered and needs to be removed from the map

2023 Q1 sales data has been published

Chicago Cityscape has added the latest quarter of property sales in Cook County. There were 25,009 sales recorded between January 1, 2023, and March 31, 2023. That is a 4.7 percent decrease in sales compared to 2022 Q4.

Our full dataset of Cook County property sales spans the period of 2014 to the first quarter of 2023; data comes from the Illinois Department of Revenue and is updated quarterly, within two weeks of the end of the quarter.

46 percent of these sales and transactions were for Chicago properties. Use the Property Sales Browser to analyze the number and value of sales in other municipalities.

chart showing the number of property sales per quarter between 2019 Q1 and 2023 Q1 inclusive


Ten big changes we made in 2023 Q1

Our next Lunch Break Update is scheduled for Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 12 PM. RSVP is required . These meetings showcase a handful of the new and updated features we built in the previous quarter. (We’ll select four or five from the list below — let us know if you want to see a particular featu...

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