Methodology

Where these numbers come from

Short version: public Zillow Research data, refreshed when Zillow updates it (monthly), with nothing edited or estimated by us.

The data source

Every rent figure on this site comes from the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), published openly by Zillow Research and free to use with attribution. ZORI is a smoothed measure of typical observed market-rate rent across apartments, condos, and single-family homes — weighted to reflect the full rental stock, not just what happens to be listed in a given week.

We track three series: Skokie citywide, each Skokie ZIP code with enough rental volume, and the Chicago metro for comparison.

What the numbers mean

"Average rent" here is the ZORI value: what a typical unit rents for, across all sizes and types. It is not a 1-bedroom price or an average of asking prices.
Yearly change compares the same month a year earlier, so seasonality doesn't distort it.
Missing ZIPs: Zillow suppresses areas with too little rental data to be reliable; we show only what's published.
Recent months get revised: ZORI re-estimates recent months as more data arrives — usually by under about 1%, but we have seen a monthly release shift a city's recent figures by 2–3% and a single ZIP by considerably more (small-sample ZIP series are the most revision-prone). A figure can therefore move between our monthly updates without the market itself moving. We always show Zillow's latest published value.

Census demographics (2019–2023 ACS 5-year)

The who-rents page adds renter share, median gross rent, rent burden, and household income from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates — a separate public dataset from ZORI. Two honesty notes: ACS "gross rent" includes utilities and reflects all current renters (including long-held leases), so it reads lower than ZORI's current market rate; and ACS 5-year figures carry margins of error and lag the market by design. We show the two side by side rather than blending them.

HUD fair market rents (FY2026)

The fair-market-rent page shows HUD's fiscal-year 2026 Fair Market Rents, including the ZIP-level Small Area FMRs HUD publishes for this metro. Source: HUD Office of Policy Development and Research, public FMR dataset. An FMR is a program standard — the 40th-percentile gross rent (including utilities) used to set housing-voucher payment standards — not a measurement of today's asking rents, which is why we present it separately from ZORI rather than blending them.

Seasonality (best time to rent)

The best-time-to-rent page averages each calendar month's change in the city index across every year we have (since 2020). Two cautions baked into that page: we deliberately use the non-seasonally-adjusted ZORI series (the seasonal swing is the point), and with only 5–6 observations per calendar month, one unusual year can move an average — so the page also shows in how many years each month actually rose. ZORI's smoothing means real asking-rent swings are sharper and slightly earlier than the index shows.

Income needed to afford rent

The income-to-rent page divides the typical ZORI rent by the 30%-of-gross-income standard (HUD's definition of "cost-burdened") to estimate the income needed to afford Skokie — nothing more elaborate than arithmetic on the published rent. The comparison to what people actually earn uses ACS median household income (all households, not renters specifically, who tend to earn less) and the ACS renter rent-burden figure. It's a budgeting guideline, not a landlord's or lender's qualification rule, and the page says so.

Tenant rights & resources

The tenant-rights page is a directory, not legal analysis: every rule it states is paraphrased from — and linked to — an official source (state statutes, courts, government agencies, and legal-aid organizations), and we verify the links are live before publishing. It is not legal advice; where a summary and the linked source ever disagree, the source is right.

Download the data

Everything this site charts is one plain CSV you can open in a spreadsheet or load in code: rents.csv — the full monthly series for Skokie citywide, every published ZIP, the Chicago metro, and the U.S. national index (columns: month, geo_type, geo_id, geo_name, rent_usd). It updates whenever Zillow publishes a new month. If you republish or cite it, keep the attribution that's in the file: the underlying figures are Zillow's ZORI, via SkokieRent.

What this site can't tell you

Honesty section. These are market-level statistics — your actual quote depends on unit size, condition, and timing. We don't list apartments, we don't score landlords, and we can't see rent-stabilized or informal units. When the data is two months old (Zillow's normal lag), the homepage date says so.

Update cadence

Zillow refreshes ZORI monthly; we check daily and rebuild automatically when fresh data lands. The latest ZORI data covers June 2026; this page was last rebuilt 2026-07-22 13:15 UTC.

Who runs this

SkokieRent is an independent, automated rent tracker — part of a small network of city rent sites. Questions or corrections: noreply@webmasterandmore.com.