If you only track one number in this market, I would make it this one.
Months of supply is the simplest measure there is. It asks how long it would take to sell every home currently on the market if not one more came up for sale. Six months is roughly balanced. Under three is a seller’s market. Under two is tight.
Here is where the North Shore stands, detached homes, as of August:
| Town | Months of supply | A year ago |
|---|---|---|
| Wilmette | 0.7 | 1.1 |
| Northfield | 1.2 | 1.5 |
| Evanston | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| Winnetka | 1.3 | 1.7 |
| Glenview | 1.3 | 1.6 |
| Highland Park | 1.4 | 1.7 |
| Kenilworth | 1.5 | 2.5 |
| Glencoe | 2.2 | 1.5 |
| Lake Forest | 2.3 | 2.9 |
Every town on this list is in seller’s market territory. Most of them are deep in it.
Wilmette is the number worth staring at
Seven tenths of one month.
Put differently: if no new Wilmette listing came on the market starting today, everything currently for sale would be gone in about three weeks.
A year ago Wilmette was at 1.1 months, which was already tight. It has gotten tighter since. And the price data follows exactly where you would expect. The median detached sale in Wilmette is $1,400,000 year to date, up 15.8% from $1,209,000 over the same period in 2025. That is the largest percentage gain of any town on the list except Kenilworth.
Sellers there are closing at 104.4% of their original asking price. Homes are going under contract in a median of 7 days.
None of that is a coincidence. It is what happens when there is very little to buy.
Kenilworth had the biggest swing
Kenilworth went from 2.5 months of supply to 1.5 in a year. That is a 40% drop, the steepest on the list.
It also posted the largest price move: the median detached sale is $2,395,000, up 28.3% from $1,866,250.
I would attach a caveat to that one. Kenilworth closed 53 detached sales in eight months. That is a small enough number that a handful of large sales can move the median noticeably, and a 28% jump should be read as a real direction rather than a precise figure. Small towns produce loud percentages.
Then there is Glencoe
Glencoe is the exception, and it is the most interesting line in the table.
Supply there went up, from 1.5 months to 2.2. It is the only town on the North Shore where there is more to choose from than there was a year ago.
That did not happen because demand fell. Glencoe closed 117 detached sales, up from 106. Prices rose 13.3% to a median of $1,920,000. Sellers received 104.9% of their original asking price, the highest figure of any town on this list.
It happened because more people decided to sell. New listings in Glencoe were up 35.9%, from 142 to 193. Nowhere else came close to that.
So Glencoe is not softening. Glencoe is the one place where supply is being answered.
What this means depending on which side you are on
If you are thinking about selling, the arithmetic is straightforward. There is very little competition, buyers have almost nothing to compare your house to, and eight of nine towns have less inventory than they did a year ago. That combination does not last forever and it is unusually strong right now.
If you are buying, this is the harder market of the two, and I would not pretend otherwise. You are competing for a small pool, and the homes that come out priced correctly are gone in about a week. The practical answer is to be ready before you need to be: financing sorted, decision-makers aligned, and a clear view of what you will do in the first 48 hours. Almost every buyer I have lost a house for lost it on timing, not on price.
Glencoe is worth a look if you are shopping in that range, simply because there is more of it.
The caveat, as always
These are town-level numbers covering every price point and condition. A house under $1 million and a house over $3 million are in the same column here and they do not behave the same way.
If you want the supply figure for your specific price band and town, I can pull it. It takes me a few minutes and there is nothing attached to it.
Source: Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), Local Market Update, August 2026. Detached single-family homes, January through August 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. Months of supply is measured at month end. Percent of list price is measured against the original asking price, not a reduced one.
