Chicago Suburban Multifamily Drawing More Buyers As Construction Lags

The battle for Chicago suburban multifamily properties is heating up.

The suburbs’ strong multifamily rent growth and dry construction pipeline are piquing investor interest, even as the national apartment outlook softens, panelists said at Bisnow’s Future of Chicago Suburbs Real Estate Summit on Wednesday. 

“In the Midwest, trying to acquire anything is very competitive in this marketplace. It really has been most of my career, but it's as competitive as ever today,” Moyer Properties founder Greg Moyer said at the event, held at Bell Works Chicagoland. “We're seeing more showing activity and more offer activity on sales than we've seen in years.”

The 212 Chicago suburban multifamily properties that traded hands last year represented a 29.3% increase from 2024's total, according to data provided by Interra Realty. Total sales volume increased 7% year-over-year, up to about $750M in 2025 from roughly $701M in 2024. 

Moyer said cap rates are compressing faster than the cost of debt, a source of enthusiasm from the buyer pool. Still, institutional investors or institutional joint ventures largely haven’t dipped their toes into the suburbs, he said. 

Cook County, the state’s most populous county by a wide margin, had the lion’s share of the deals in 2025, with 137. There were 30 transactions in DuPage County, 16 in Lake County and 14 in Will County. 

As the lack of new supply helps multifamily owners push up rents, it is also putting pressure on suburban municipalities to permit more apartments to keep housing costs from escalating.

“We're clearly underserved in the suburbs, and we see that only increasing from a need standpoint,” Tucker Development CEO Richard Tucker said.

Courtney Brower, vice president of development at Focus, said the company is seeing a lot of opportunity in Lake County, with one project more than 95% leased and a few more in the planning pipeline. Many of the people who live at the Lake County development also work in the county, and those companies pay higher wages that support higher rents. 

“As long as people are priced out of homeownership, which I think we're going to continue to see, despite rates coming down recently, and as long as people are enjoying that flexibility of renting, we're going to continue to see demand in Lake County,” Brower said. 

The renter profile in Focus’ suburban buildings is often empty nesters or people who have recently retired and want flexibility in their lifestyles, Brower said. Many renters often have second homes and want to be able to leave their suburban apartments without worrying about maintenance or packages, but they also want to be closer to their families. 

Moyer Properties also has a lot of retirees in its tenant mix who don’t want to live in senior housing, as well as younger people who are renting for longer than in the past because they can’t afford homes. The other component is tenants going through lifestyle changes, like a divorce. 

“Our average age that’s coming into our units is 40 years old, [but] we don't have any 40-year-olds,” Moyer said. “It’s the younger and the older groups that are coming in.”

Still, financing challenges leave it hard to fully take advantage of a lack of new supply in the area’s multifamily pipeline. 

“​​It's so hard to get a deal to work or to get it financed,” said Christopher Coleman, president of the Nicholas Family of Cos. “I like to call it ‘the mosaic period,’ where there's all these little pieces that have to come together. It's not what it was three, four or five years ago.”

The growing need for new housing in the suburbs and investors’ lack of favor for office assets in the area have led to new multifamily developments in the area that wouldn’t have been considered in the past. 

Over the last couple of years, Brower said she has worked with municipalities that have been supportive of introducing more housing into their communities. Typically, they want housing in transit-oriented areas, downtown districts or retail centers. Proposals that include those elements are generally aligned with municipalities’ goals and are executed more quickly, she said.

Five years ago, apartments in Hoffman Estates might have had a harder time getting approved, village of Hoffman Estates Director of Economic Development Kevin Kramer said.

“Both office dropping in demand and the need for supply in the housing market, now five years later, it's easier to get approved because they fill up by the time they've finished construction,” Kramer said.