Evanston’s current Zillow ZHVI is $496,114, a typical city home value, while Zillow ZORI is $2,562 a month, a typical observed city market rent. Their implied gross yield is 6.2% before every operating cost. Against the city ACS median household income of $96,434, the Zillow value is 5.14x income and annual Zillow rent is 31.9% of income. That combination frames a sizable entry price and affordability pressure; it does not establish property-level cash flow.
Citywide ACS housing context shows 34,095 units, with 43.8% of occupied units renter-occupied and 7.0% of all units vacant. ACS reports a $481,200 median value for surveyed owner-occupied homes and $1,762 median gross rent for surveyed occupied rentals, including contract rent plus selected utilities. Those ACS measures differ in concept and period from Zillow’s typical value and observed market rent, so they should not be averaged or treated as matched pricing. Citywide vacancy also cannot predict one unit’s lease-up.
Direct city depth is mixed. Rent burden reaches 53.1%, while single-family structures represent 37.4% of units and large multifamily structures 31.7%. For-rent vacancies were 26.1% of vacant units, with separate for-sale and seasonal categories also present. These ACS structure and vacancy-reason measures do not count available investment properties. Population is 76,340, up 2.4% between overlapping ACS five-year vintages; that change is not annualized, is not a five-year event count, and may reflect boundary changes. The income measure above, alongside 6.2% unemployment and 11.8% poverty, describes demand constraints but cannot prove tenant quality, causation, or future leasing.
Cook County’s county record shows a Realtor median marketing time of 33 days, useful for broader resale-liquidity context but not an Evanston property estimate. Cook County’s county property-tax rate is 1.908%, a screening input rather than a parcel tax bill. The Chicago metro job measure rose 0.15%, indicating nearly flat broader labor momentum without measuring city employment. The national Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage rate is 6.58%, setting financing context rather than a borrower-specific quote.
The central limitation is aggregation: city Zillow metrics describe typical market levels, city ACS figures describe surveyed housing and households, and wider records use different geographies and denominators. Before underwriting a specific property, verify purchase price, achievable lease terms, unit condition, legal rental use, parcel taxes, insurance and climate exposure, association charges, utilities, maintenance and capital work, vacancy allowance, management, and loan terms. Recalculate net operating income and debt coverage from those property-level inputs, then stress-test rent, downtime, repairs, and exit costs.