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Why people love it

This is the community area that holds Back of the Yards and Canaryville, the neighborhoods the Union Stock Yards built between 1865 and 1971. Sherman Park is 61 acres designed by the Olmsted Brothers with a lagoon wrapping two thirds of the site and a Burnham fieldhouse, and Davis Square opened in 1905 as one of the first neighborhood parks in the country.

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What's drawing people

Industrial capital is coming back to the old yards. Brookfield broke ground in April 2026 on Western Works, a $104 million, four building, 560,000 square foot campus at 4435 South Western with 100 permanent jobs and completion set for 2027. The $65 million United Yards development at 47th and Ashland is now open, with 50 affordable units, a health center, a tech training center and local retail in the restored Goldblatt's building.

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The value

New City is 66.6 percent 2 to 4 unit buildings, the highest concentration of small multifamily I track anywhere, so the product you want is the product that exists. At a $270,000 median with a typical 2 bedroom at $1,295, two units run about $2,590 a month against basis. Sixty percent of households rent, which means demand is already there, and 37.6 percent of properties have had a foreclosure filing since 2005, which means condition varies block to block and you inspect every single one.

What people say about New City

The 2 to 4 unit median went from $50,000 to $270,000 across the 2013 to 2025 rolling windows, up 440 percent.
66.6 percent of the housing stock is 2 to 4 unit buildings, the deepest small multifamily supply I have measured.
A typical 2 bedroom rents at $1,295 and 60 percent of households are renters, so the tenant base is built in.

This is the community area that holds Back of the Yards and Canaryville, the neighborhoods the Union Stock Yards built between 1865 and 1971.

New City covers Back of the Yards and Canaryville, and its identity came from the Union Stock Yards, which ran from 1865 to 1971 and were the largest livestock and meatpacking center in the country. Upton Sinclair put the neighborhood in front of the world with The Jungle in 1906. In 1939 Saul Alinsky and park director Joseph Meegan founded the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council here, which is where Alinsky developed the method of community organizing, and Jane Jacobs cited the neighborhood in 1961 as a model of community led renewal. Canaryville was an Irish enclave and is now Irish and Mexican; the area overall is 68 percent Hispanic today.

The housing was built for packinghouse families, which is why 66.6 percent of it is 2 to 4 unit buildings and only 22.2 percent is single family. Workers cottages, frame two flats and brick three flats sit on tight lots close to the old yards. Forty percent of households own and sixty percent rent. That ratio tells you what this place has always been, which is a neighborhood of small landlords and working tenants, and it is exactly why the small multifamily market here has depth.

The numbers moved hard. Three year rolling medians on arms length warranty deed sales put the 2 to 4 unit median at $50,000 in the 2013 window and $270,000 in the 2025 window, a 440 percent gain and the highest absolute price of the multifamily areas on the Southwest and South Sides. Part of that is the foreclosure trough being genuinely brutal, and 37.6 percent of properties have had at least one filing since 2005. Part of it is that industrial capital came back, and 560,000 square feet of new Brookfield space at Western and 47th is not a rumor, it is under construction.

This fits an investor who wants scale in small buildings and is willing to underwrite each one on its own bones. It also fits an owner occupant who wants a three flat with real parks nearby, since Sherman Park and Davis Square are both National Register landmarks and both are walkable. I would rather own brick here than promises elsewhere, but I would not buy sight unseen, because the spread between a maintained building and a neglected one on the same street is enormous.

Last updated August 2026.