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Author: Mark Ainely | Partner GC Realty & Development & Co-Host Straight Up Chicago Investor Podcast
We spend a lot of time crunching numbers at GC Realty & Development, LLC. That’s because we want you to have the data you need to make informed choices about your Chicagoland investment property.
To determine whether your rental is performing well, we closely monitor two important numbers:
Days on Market (DOM), or how long it takes to lease a property
Applications per listing, or how many qualified applicants does your listing attract
Tracking these metrics together will give you a clear picture of how well your rental property is performing. To give you a baseline for your rentals, we broke down our average DOM and number of applications below for the first three quarters of 2025.
What DOM and Applications Tell Property Owners
Most landlords talk about the rent price first, but smart investors start one step earlier:
Applications per listing tells you about demand and tenant quality. More qualified applicants usually means you can screen more selectively and sign a stronger lease.
Days on Market indicates leasing efficiency and how well you’re marketing the property. A longer DOM means vacancy loss, carrying costs, and often rent concessions to fill the vacancy.
But the real insight comes from pairing them. This way, you’ll find red flags and potential weak areas to improve performance.
| Application/DOM Ratio | Demand/Operational Performance |
✅ | High applications + low DOM | Strong demand and strong operations |
🟡 | Low applications + high DOM | Potential pricing, marketing, condition, or process issues |
🟡 | High applications + high DOM | Strong demand, but conversion issues (showings, response time, or screening bottlenecks) |
❗ | Low applications + low DOM | Potential market misalignment (amenities, pricing, condition) and possible operational or property management issues |
GC Realty Snapshot for Q1 - Q3 of 2025
For Q1 - Q3 2025, GC Realty had the following DOM and application averages:
Average Days on Market (Chicagoland, Q1 - Q3 2025): 14.28
Total Number of Applications (Chicagoland, Q1 - Q3 2025): 1,576
These two averages create a baseline you can use to evaluate every listing you own. Two things to keep in mind:
If your property is leasing slower than our average DOM, you’re losing money with a vacant property (that we could’ve helped your lease faster)
If your listing is generating fewer applications than the GC Realty average, you have less leverage in screening (and may not be hitting the same markets that we do)
Investor takeaway: If your rental property isn’t getting the interest to drive applications and is sitting vacant longer, you're not getting the best ROI from your investment.
The GC Realty Difference
Finding qualified applicants and placing them quickly in vacant rental homes gets you the most for your investment. At GC Realty & Development, LLC, we pride ourselves on beating Chicagoland market averages.
Applicants and Screening
Our marketing consistently brings in more applications from highly qualified tenants. We’ve created a screening process that weeds out red flags and accepts only the best applicants. This resulted in zero evictions in 2024! We share our techniques in the free screening guide!
[CTA: Download the Chicago Tenant Screening Guide]
Days on Market
And because we’ve perfected our processes for efficiency, we get paying tenants into your rental properties faster, so your monthly rent checks flow sooner. Learn more about our proven process and how we can help you get the most from your rental with our property management services.
