Long Grove Home Prices: Why the Median Is the Wrong Number to Watch

How does a housing market get more expensive and cheaper at the same time? In Long Grove right now, it does both. The median sale price fell over the past year. The price per square foot rose. Homes are taking longer to sell than they did twelve months ago. None of those three facts are wrong, and none of them tell you what a house in this village actually costs to buy or to own. If you're comparing Long Grove to another North Shore or northwest suburb using the number you saw on a portal last week, you're comparing the wrong thing.

The Number That Doesn't Add Up

Over the three months ending in May 2026, the median sale price for a home in Long Grove was $960,000, down 8.6% from the same period a year earlier. In that same window, the median price per square foot climbed to $275, up 10% year over year. Homes also sat longer: 65 days on market on average, compared with 38 days the year before, with 20 homes sold in May 2026 versus 21 the year prior.

Read those numbers side by side and the story falls apart. A market that's genuinely softening doesn't usually see price per square foot rise 10% while the median falls 8.6%. What's actually happening is a shift in which homes are selling, not a broad repricing of the village. When a run of larger, higher-end homes moves through the pipeline more slowly while smaller or newer homes turn over quickly, the median can drop even as the per-square-foot value of what's on the market goes up. Movoto's July 2026 snapshot shows a median list price of $1.24 million and a median of 82 days on market, a different measure (list price versus closed sale price) but the same underlying pattern: a market where the headline number moves around because of what's in the mix, not because buyers are suddenly paying less for the same house.

Three Sales, Same Season, Wildly Different Numbers

The clearest way to see the mix shift is to look at actual closings from the same few months, side by side.

Two of these three sold in single-digit days. The third, a nearly 7,000-square-foot estate home, took 65 days, which happens to land exactly on the village-wide average that's getting reported as a slowdown. That's the tell. The 65-day average isn't a sign that Long Grove buyers have gone cold on the market. It's a sign that the village's largest, highest-end inventory takes longer to find a buyer than a well-priced 2,600-square-foot home, and when enough of that inventory is on the market at once, it pulls the average up even while smaller homes are still moving in about a week.

Same Price Tag, Different Bill

Here's where the median matters even less than it seems to. Two homes priced identically in Long Grove can carry meaningfully different tax bills, and the reason has nothing to do with the village government.

Long Grove is one of roughly 3% of municipalities in Illinois that levies no municipal property tax at all. The village funds itself through sales tax, permits, and fees instead. That doesn't mean your tax bill is small. It means the entire bill is built from other taxing bodies: Lake County, your township, your fire protection district, and, by far the largest line, your school district. And Long Grove doesn't have one school district. According to the village's own breakdown, homes here feed into either Fremont School District 79 or Kildeer Countryside Community Consolidated School District 96 for elementary and middle school, and then split again at the high school level between Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125 and Mundelein High School District 120.

You can see this priced into the market already. Listings across the village routinely lead with school district assignment as a selling point, not square footage or lot size, because buyers already know it changes the math. A home in the Stevenson High School District attendance area is being marketed differently than an otherwise comparable home a few streets over in the Mundelein High School District boundary, and the tax levy that funds each district is set independently. Two houses at the same price, a short walk apart, can land on different sides of that line.

If you're pricing out what ownership actually costs, the school district boundary matters more than the village's tax policy. Ask which district a specific address falls into before you assume two comparably priced homes cost the same to hold.

What's Under the Yard Matters Too

The other quirk that a median price can't capture: a meaningful share of Long Grove is still unincorporated Lake County, which means private well water and septic systems rather than municipal hookups. If you're used to shopping in a fully-serviced suburb, this changes your due diligence checklist. Well and septic permits, inspections, and any property alterations for these systems go through Lake County directly rather than the village, and the county's Water Wells division inspects and monitors both private and semi-private wells to guard against groundwater contamination. A septic system replacement isn't rare or catastrophic, but it isn't free either, and costs scale with house size, which matters if you're evaluating one of the larger estate lots that make up a good share of Long Grove's inventory.

The village is actively converting some of this infrastructure. The Aptakisic Road Water Main Extension Project, which began the week of June 8, 2026, is installing a new 12-inch water main east from the Sunset Grove parking lot, tying into the future Long Grove Fire Protection District site, with completion expected by August 31, 2026. That's real progress, but it's also a reminder that not every part of the village is on the same utility system yet. Before you fall for a wooded three-acre lot, find out whether the water comes from a well and the waste goes to a septic field, and budget your inspection accordingly.

The Village Is Reinvesting While the Headline Number Looks Soft

If longer days on market made you think Long Grove is losing momentum, the ground-level activity says otherwise. Downtown, two storefronts held a dual grand opening on May 3, 2026: Artistic Creations of Long Grove, an artisan goods shop opened by Ellen Glassman at 405 Robert Parker Coffin Road, and The Olive Tap, an olive oil and balsamic vinegar shop at 302 Old McHenry Road that owner Kelly Petrocelli reopened after the original store closed around 2021. Petrocelli grew up around the original business before bringing it back to the same downtown corridor.

"Everybody's so excited that we're back. I've had so much support from the community."

That's the texture behind a market that's supposedly cooling. The village approved its 2026 road maintenance program in May, resurfacing Checker Road, Hampton Drive, and Tall Oaks Drive and adding speed tables on Checker Road. A village update this summer put the Arlington Heights Road bridge project at 90% complete, with center-median landscaping finished and the outer lanes being prepped for waterproofing and resurfacing. None of that reads like a place buyers are backing away from. It reads like a village investing in its own infrastructure while its highest-end inventory simply takes longer to move, which is a different story than the median price alone tells.

If You're Comparing Long Grove to a Neighboring Suburb

Before you weigh a Long Grove listing against something in a nearby town, get specific answers to these:

1. Is the exact address inside the Stevenson or the Mundelein high school attendance boundary, and inside Fremont SD79 or Kildeer Countryside CCSD96 for elementary?
2. Is the property on municipal water and sewer, or on a private well and septic system, and if it's a well or septic system, when was it last inspected?
3. Does the recent sale you're comparing against fall into the larger, slower-moving estate segment, or the smaller, faster-moving segment? A 65-day average and a 9-day sale can both be true in the same month.
4. What does the combined tax bill actually look like once county, township, fire district, and school levies are added, since there's no village property tax line to offset them?

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Long Grove really have no property tax? The village itself doesn't levy a municipal property tax, one of a small number of Illinois municipalities that funds itself through sales tax and fees instead. You still pay county, township, fire protection, and school district taxes, which make up the bulk of any Illinois tax bill regardless of where you live.

Are all homes in Long Grove on well and septic? No, but a meaningful portion of the village is unincorporated Lake County and relies on private well and septic systems rather than municipal hookups. The village has ongoing projects, including a water main extension along Aptakisic Road, to expand municipal water access into more areas.

Why did days on market nearly double if prices are still rising per square foot? Because the homes taking longest to sell tend to be the largest, highest-priced listings, which pull the village-wide average up even while smaller and newer homes continue to sell in a week or two.

If you're trying to figure out what a specific Long Grove address actually costs to buy and to hold, from school district lines to what's running under the yard, Deb Baker Homes can walk the real numbers with you. Request a complimentary home valuation and we'll show you what the median isn't telling you.