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Chicago is on track to greenlight more new housing units this year than it had the year before.
Since the start of the year, the city has approved roughly 1,800 units based across 346 projects, according to an analysis of multifamily and single-family housing permitting records by TRD Data. The number of units is up by 12 percent compared to the first six months of 2025.
For all of 2025, the neighborhood that saw the most number of approvals was the Near West Side, with 742 housing units. The Near West Side also has the most approvals so far in 2026, with 262.
About 45 percent of the permits issued so far this year were for one-family homes, which will result in 154 homes. Meanwhile, the largest project approved this year was a 199-unit multifamily project at 566 West Van Buren Street, a West Loop apartment complex whose construction had been stalled. The developer is Riverside Investment & Development.
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Construction in the Windy City has dwindled over the past year in general as high interest rates, sluggish investment and shifting corporate needs, contractors and industry insiders previously told The Real Deal.
The increase in housing units comes also as affordability remains a core issue in the metro. From 2012 to 2023, the supply of affordable rental housing shrank faster than the demand for it, according to a report from the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University.
Last year, Chicago OK’d more than 4,900 new housing units across the city, an almost 15 percent year-over-year increase. However, both 2024 and 2025 lagged 2023, which saw the approval of some 9,500 units across the city.
Chicago’s job and population growth is slower than some of the other parts of the country, such as Sun Belt markets, which have seen an explosion of jobs, populations and housing, noted Geoff Smith, executive director of the Institute for Housing Studies.
“Chicago is a stable, mature metro area or city,” Smith said. “So you don’t necessarily see a lot of growth and population … as you might see in other parts of the country where you are seeing more new construction.”