Herrin Has 31 Things For Sale. Only 20 Are Houses.

By Greg Holthaus, Owner & Designated Managing Broker · September 10, 2026

I pulled every active listing in Herrin this morning — the whole town, no filters. Thirty-one listings came back. That sounds like a market. It is not.

Eight of those 31 are commercial buildings. Three are bare land. That leaves 20 houses for sale in a city of roughly 12,250 people. You could walk through all of them in a long weekend and still be home for supper Sunday.

Half the Market Sits Between $100K and $200K

Sort those 20 houses by price and they fall into three clean groups:

That is a genuinely different problem than the one buyers think they have. Nobody in Herrin is getting priced out. They are getting choice-d out. There is a real difference between "I cannot afford it" and "there are four of them and one has a pool I do not want."

The Bottom of the Market Is Real — and It Is Work

Six houses are asking under $100,000, starting at $22,000. I want to be careful here, because this is where people either find the best deal of their life or the worst weekend of it.

These homes are small and old. Most are under 1,450 square feet, two bedrooms and one bath, and the per-foot asking prices in this group run from about $25 to $72. A house that asks $25 a foot in a market with a $99 median is not a bargain someone forgot to price. It is a house that needs a roof, or a furnace, or a foundation conversation, or all three.

That does not make it a bad buy. I have watched people turn a $60,000 Herrin house into a home they love and a fair bit of equity. But you are buying a project. The discount is real money and it is money you spend later, with a contractor, on his schedule — not yours. Go in knowing that, and the bottom of this market is one of the best values in Southern Illinois.

New Construction Is the Outlier, and It Explains Everything

Two of the twenty houses are new construction. They are asking roughly $167 and $170 per square foot against a town median near $99. That is a 70 percent premium, and every time a buyer sees it, the same question comes out: who pays that in Herrin?

People who are done with projects, is who. Look at what that gap actually buys — a roof with 30 years on it, HVAC nobody has nursed along, wiring that will pass, and no weekend spent picking a contractor. The premium is not for the street. It is the price of everything the resale stock has not had done yet.

Which is why the middle of the market — the ten homes between $100K and $200K — is where most Herrin buyers land. It is the band where the work is mostly done and the price still makes sense.

And Then There Is Park Avenue

Here is the part of the Herrin market almost nobody is watching. Of the eight commercial buildings for sale, five of them are on Park Avenue, the spine of downtown Herrin. They range from a $99,000 storefront to a 24,000-square-foot building asking $1.4 million.

Five downtown buildings on the market at once, in the town that throws the best festival in Illinois, ten minutes from Carbondale and five from Marion. I do not know whether that reads as a warning or an opportunity, and honestly it depends entirely on who buys them. But if you have been waiting for a shot at a downtown Herrin building, this is more inventory than I have seen on that street in a while. That is what our commercial page is for.

If You Are Selling in Herrin, Read This Twice

Twenty houses. That is your entire competition. Not twenty in your price band — twenty in the whole city.

Herrin's median home value has run up about 13.6 percent year over year, the cost-of-living index here is 76.7 against a national 100, and the school district posts a 13:1 student-teacher ratio with a 90 percent graduation rate. Those are the things a buyer moving in from out of the area is actually shopping. Thin inventory plus real fundamentals is the seller's side of this market, and it is a good side to be on.

The one thing that still gets sellers hurt: pricing off the new-construction number when you have a resale house. That $167-a-foot listing is not your comp. The $99 median is your neighborhood. Price against the ten houses you are truly competing with, and Herrin will move your home.

Herrin Market FAQ

💰 Twenty Houses. Know Your Number Before You Tour Them.

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Who is Greg Holthaus?

Greg Holthaus is the Owner and Designated Managing Broker of Southern Illinois Realty Experts, with 25+ years in Southern Illinois real estate and more than 10,000 transactions closed. He leads a full-service operation — home sales, mortgage, title, and property management under one roof — with offices in Marion, Herrin, and Carbondale. Meet Greg ›

About the numbers: Counts, asking prices, sizes and per-square-foot figures come from local MLS listing data for active listings in Herrin, IL (ZIP 62948), retrieved September 10, 2026. Of the 31 active listings, 20 publish both bedroom count and square footage and are treated as houses; eight are commercial buildings and three are land. Medians are of asking prices, not sale prices, and asking prices are what sellers hope to get rather than what homes close for. Population, cost-of-living, appreciation and school figures are from public community and district data. Listings are represented by various brokerages and any property described here can go under contract, sell, or change price at any time — if something catches your eye, reach out and we will confirm current status. Price bands are described as market context, not as recommendations, valuations, or appraisals. Nothing here is a loan offer or rate quote.