Moving from Chicago to Las Vegas

Illinois taxes individual income at a flat 4.95% of net taxable income (Illinois’s rate). Nevada has no state income tax, and its constitution bans taxing personal income (Nevada’s guidance). Nevada still has property, sales and business taxes; it just leaves your paycheck and your portfolio alone.

Your situation	What to look at
Still working or investing	Wages and taxable investment income are where the difference shows up. Illinois-source income can stay taxable after you move.
Selling a business or a big stock position	Sort out residency, sourcing and the timing of the sale before you commit to it.
Retired	Illinois already exempts eligible retirement income, so property taxes, taxable investments and estate planning may matter more.
Keeping the Chicago home	Plan for its costs, the exemption you’ll lose, and what it means for your domicile and your estate.

The retirement point is a big one. Illinois doesn’t tax eligible 401(k) and IRA withdrawals, traditional-to-Roth conversions or the federally taxable part of Social Security. Taxable brokerage income is different. That’s why a retired couple and a working executive with similar cash flow can see completely different savings.

For founders, Illinois will stop following the federal exclusion for qualified small business stock: for tax years ending on or after December 31, 2026, those gains get added back to Illinois income (Illinois’s 2026 changes). If a sale is on the horizon, get your advisers involved early. Moving alone doesn’t decide whether Illinois can tax it.

Domicile is your true home: the place you live and come back to whenever you’ve been away. Illinois looks at the facts: where you spend your time, your homes, your work and family, utilities, licenses and other records (Illinois’s domicile guidance). Buying here, or keeping a careful count of your days, won’t do it on its own.

Map the real transition with your adviser, including the awkward parts: kids finishing the school year, a spouse staying behind for a while, trips back for work. Keep good records. In the year you move, Illinois generally taxes what you earned while you were a resident plus any Illinois-source income afterward, and entity income can have its own timing rules.

For 2026, Illinois’s estate tax applies above $4 million. The federal basic exclusion is $15 million per person. They’re different systems, and what’s in the estate, deductions, earlier taxable gifts and elections all change the result. Illinois’s math is also more involved than applying a rate to whatever is over $4 million (Illinois instructions, 2026 federal instructions).

Nevada hasn’t required an estate-tax return for any death since January 1, 2005 (Nevada’s estate guidance). Federal rules still apply. Have your attorney look at the whole plan before you change how either home is owned.

Keeping a place for summers and family visits can suit you perfectly. Just bring it into the domicile conversation, and budget for two sets of taxes, insurance and maintenance, plus the travel between them. Illinois homeowner exemptions only cover your principal home (Cook’s rules), so once Nevada is home, expect to lose yours and let the assessor know. And tell your insurer if the place will sit empty for long stretches.

Illinois real estate and belongings you leave there can still put you on the hook for Illinois estate tax as a nonresident. If you sell later, a taxable gain on Illinois real estate is still Illinois-source income after you move.

Property tax can be one of the biggest differences for a Chicago buyer, but you can’t compare it by price alone. In Clark County, taxable value generally combines the land value with the cost of replacing the house, minus depreciation, and assessed value is 35% of taxable value (how Clark calculates it). That isn’t 35% of what you paid.

Here’s a made-up comparison at about $1.5 million of market value. For Lake Forest, assume an equalized assessed value of $500,000 and only the $8,000 general homestead exemption. For Henderson, I’ve used two sample taxable values, since Nevada doesn’t start from the price.

Example and tax period	Calculation	Annual amount
Lake Forest, 2025 predominant rate	($500,000 − $8,000) × 5.775702%	$28,416
Henderson district 500, FY2026–27, with $1m assumed taxable value	$1,000,000 × 35% × 2.9613%	$10,365 before abatement
Same Henderson district, with $1.5m assumed taxable value	$1,500,000 × 35% × 2.9613%	$15,547 before abatement

I ran these made-up houses through each area’s published numbers (Lake County’s predominant rate, its homestead exemption, Clark’s district rate) and rounded the results. The tax years don’t quite match, not every Lake Forest address shares that rate, and I’ve left out special assessments and other relief. So don’t read the gap as your savings; read it as a reason to price your real house.

If you’re in Cook County, city or suburbs, here’s how your own bill is built. A home the assessor values at $1.5 million works out to $1.5 million × the 10% residential assessment × the 2025 multiplier of 3.0300, less a qualifying $10,000 homeowner exemption: $444,500 of net equalized assessed value. Your tax-code rate then sets the bill (Cook’s assessment, the 2025 multiplier). DuPage has its own districts and process.

Nevada’s 3% cap limits how fast a qualifying bill can grow each year. It isn’t a 3% tax rate, and new construction and changes in use have exceptions (Clark’s abatement rules). So put your current bill next to each finalist’s assessment and cap status and, for a new home, an estimate of the bill once it’s built. I’ll help you pull those numbers for the houses on your list.

Add HOA and master-association dues, any assessments, club costs, insurance quotes, cooling, pool care, landscaping and travel. Ask for utility history, and if there’s solar, check who owns it, how it’s financed and which rate plan applies.

NV Energy has announced daily-demand billing for Southern Nevada starting January 1, 2027, based on each day’s highest 15-minute stretch of use, along with other bill changes (NV Energy’s fact sheet). Ask for an estimate under the rate that will apply after you move.

Have your CPA work federal deductions into the comparison. For 2026, the state-and-local-tax deduction limit is $40,400, shrinking above $505,000 of modified adjusted gross income to a $10,000 floor, with half those figures for married filing separately (IRS Publication 505).

If you’ve ever walked down Michigan Avenue into a January wind, you already know why lunch on a patio sounds good. Our normal January high and low are 58.5°F and 40.5°F, about what Chicago gets in April (59°F and 40.3°F). Those are the National Weather Service’s 1991–2020 airport averages for Chicago and Las Vegas.

July asks something different of you. Our normal high is 104.5°F and our normal low is 82°F, which is close to Chicago’s July high of 84.5°F. The nights don’t cool off the way you’d expect. Early walks, shade and air conditioning you can count on become part of how you plan the day, and dry heat still deserves respect; the National Weather Service’s heat advice is worth a read.

That’s why I look at how a house handles July, and I’d like you to check too. Stand on the patio in the afternoon sun. Look at the west-facing windows, how the bedrooms cool, the walk in from the garage and where guests would sit outside. Ask for service records on the AC and the summer utility bills. A beautiful pool doesn’t help much if there’s no shade around it.

If you’ll still spend summers in Chicago, line up someone here to keep an eye on the cooling, catch any leaks and check the house regularly. Two homes need a plan for running them, not just a tax plan.

Have dinner away from the hotels, somewhere you could see yourself becoming a regular. Esther’s Kitchen downtown is an easy first pick, and the restaurants along Spring Mountain Road are a whole other night (the visitors bureau has a good Chinatown guide). Pick what you like, then try the drive from a neighborhood you’re considering.

If you’re a Lyric Opera or CSO subscriber, I’ll be honest: we don’t have anything on that scale. What we do have is The Smith Center, home to Nevada Ballet Theatre and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A house-hunting trip can include a performance you’d want to go back to once the boxes are unpacked.

You can keep your Chicago loyalties and still pick up Golden Knights hockey at T-Mobile Arena. There’s a small time-zone bonus, too: a noon Central Bears game starts at 10 a.m. here. Breakfast and kickoff, same table. (You may need a streaming plan or a sports package to watch it here.)

None of this replaces your favorite lakefront walk or friendships built over decades. Decide how you’ll keep those, and give new routines a spot on the calendar. Something you do every week will tell you more about a neighborhood than one big night out.

Golf can be a once-a-month thing or the center of your week. TPC Las Vegas is open for public play in Summerlin. TPC Summerlin is a separate private club with its own memberships. Play a few rounds at the times you’d play here, then ask the clubs about availability, dues, guests and booking privileges. Living on a golf course doesn’t give you membership or the right to play it.

For a different kind of morning, Red Rock Canyon has trails and the Scenic Drive, which needs a timed-entry reservation in its busy season. Pick your outing for the weather; summer changes what’s smart and what’s fun.

And snow becomes something you choose. Lee Canyon has skiing and snowboarding up in the Spring Mountains. Check the mountain conditions and Nevada road reports before you go, since the weather, the road and the lifts all have a say. It’s a nice option, not a sure thing.

From O’Hare, American, Frontier and United all fly nonstop, and Southwest flies nonstop from Midway. Check the schedule for the days you’d fly, both ways, before you build a routine around it.

A 9 a.m. Chicago meeting is 7 a.m. here. We’re two hours behind you, so put the right time zone on your invites and think about how that early start fits your household.

If you’ll fly back often, count the whole trip: your driveway, getting to the airport, security, the flight and the last leg to family or the office. Put trips home in the yearly budget. And if you’re keeping the Illinois home, take those travel patterns back to the domicile conversation in the Money chapter.

Healthcare and schools should shape the shortlist before you fall for a house. For care, confirm your exact plan’s network, whether each practice is taking new patients, how prescriptions will work and how soon you can get in. UNLV Health’s directory is one place to start looking. Get your records moving and plan the handoff with your Chicago doctors.

For public schools, use CCSD’s zoning tool to look up the exact address for the year you’ll enroll and confirm the result with the district. Private schools and public choice programs each have their own applications and openings.

If either one is central to the move, tell me early, and we’ll build the shortlist around those drives.

Southern Nevada gets about 90% of its water from the Colorado River. About 99% of the water used indoors is recycled, but water sprayed outside mostly evaporates and can’t be recovered the same way (SNWA on where the water comes from). That’s why conservation is such a big deal here. Even so, the long-term supply question is still open.

For a house you’re serious about, find out the water provider, the irrigation rules and any HOA landscaping requirements, and ask what keeping up the yard and pool really takes. For electricity, use the full ownership budget in the Money chapter and the home’s actual usage history. Your Chicago thermostat settings and gardening habits will probably need adjusting.

Summerlin is a huge master plan made up of many villages along the west side of the valley. What matters is how a particular address works for your school, your club, your errands and your time outside.

The Ridges is guard-gated, with custom and semi-custom neighborhoods (Summerlin’s history of it). Compare the actual lot, the house, the resident amenities and the HOA obligations. If golf matters, ask where things stand: the old Bear’s Best course next door is being redeveloped.

Nearby, Red Rock Country Club has two courses: the private Mountain course and the Arroyo, which anyone can play (Summerlin’s golf directory lists both). Queensridge, also close by, has both houses and towers. If a home there looks out over the former Badlands course, check what’s planned: the City of Las Vegas approved housing on it in 2025.

Southern Highlands sits west of I-15 in the south valley, and its developer built it around parks, trails and a private golf club. It’s big, so the individual neighborhood matters more than the name. Drive the entrance and the roads you’d use, including the trip home from dinner.

Spanish Trail is an established southwest community whose country club has 27 private holes. Look closely at what the HOA maintains and at what the house itself will need in renovations and replacements.

In either area, the inside and outside have to work together: real guest space, a garage that fits your cars, afternoon shade, privacy on the patio and upkeep you’re happy with. Sometimes the smaller house that fits your week gives you more.

Henderson is its own city, with a lot of different settings. MacDonald Highlands is built into the mountainside, so it’s a natural first stop if you want a hillside home. Look hard at driveway grades, retaining walls, wind, how usable the yard is and what could be built nearby.

Seven Hills and Anthem Country Club are good comparisons. “Anthem” is really several neighborhoods with their own associations (you can see them on Henderson’s HOA map), so we’ll pin down exactly which one a house belongs to.

Lake Las Vegas, also in Henderson, gives the list a completely different landscape. Compare the specific shore and neighborhood, your access to the lake and the drive to the places you go often. It isn’t Lake Mead, and a water view doesn’t automatically come with a dock or a club membership.

I like a shortlist with real contrasts on it: an older custom house, a newer builder home, an attached home with less to maintain. Compare how the rooms flow, the stairs, storage, where guests would stay and the outdoor space before you compare square footage.

For each finalist, run the Money chapter’s ownership budget for that specific address. Ask for every HOA charge, any planned assessments, the insurance terms and the work you’d want done before moving in. Check the land around it and which jurisdiction the home is in, because a Las Vegas mailing address doesn’t always mean the City of Las Vegas (Clark County’s parcel glossary explains mailing city versus legal township).

Tell me when you’re hoping to move, what you want to spend and what the house has to do for you. Start with what your Chicago home gets right: room for the grown kids when they visit, a quiet office, a kitchen everyone ends up in, or enough separation that guests can keep their own hours. Then tell me what you’d happily leave behind.

Give me the practical anchors too. A particular school, a specialist, frequent trips back to O’Hare or a morning tee time can change which homes are worth seeing. Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves: single-level living might be non-negotiable while the architectural style is flexible. And tell me whether the Chicago house has to sell first or is staying in the family.

Then I work through the long list and cut it down to a shortlist. Half the value is in what comes off the list: knowing why a gorgeous house would make your actual week harder. By the end, every home on it is there for a reason.

Get the buying side ready while we build the list. If you’re financing, find out what your lender needs to approve your income, assets and the way you’ll own the home. If you’re paying cash, confirm the money is accessible and whether your advisers need to move anything first.

If you’re considering buying sight unseen, I’ll send you as much video as you want and my honest opinion of each home. The two go together. A camera can show you the terrace. I can tell you whether it gives you the kind of privacy you meant when you asked for outdoor space.

Tell me what you want a closer look at, especially anything the listing photos leave fuzzy. How do the rooms connect? What’s behind the back wall? Will the garage fit your cars and everything else you’re bringing? Ask me what I like, what worries me and what needs a specialist’s eye. That’s how you compare homes properly from Chicago.

Video also helps if you’re coming down, because you arrive with a sharper list. It might answer a layout question early or flag something worth checking in person. I’ll tell you what I saw myself and what I’m only passing along from the seller or the paperwork. A video can’t tell you how a house smells, how it feels on a hot afternoon or what’s hidden behind a wall.

Most of my clients come down once or twice, usually for a weekend or so. With the shortlist ready, I drive you around and show you every house myself. All you have to do is look, and ask me anything on the drive between houses. You’ll also see what a map can’t tell you: the way in from the main road, the streets around each house and how far apart everything really is.

Save a few hours for your own routine: the drive to the office or the golf course at the hour you’d make it, a walk around the block, dinner somewhere local. Set up school, doctor or club appointments before you fly, since some need a weekday. And if you’re still not sure about the heat, a warm-weather visit will answer what a lovely January weekend can’t.

Keep the same few notes on every house: what worked, what disappointed, what we still need to verify and whether the trade-offs are worth it. Your favorite listing photo may not turn out to be your favorite home. The visit did its job if you come away knowing what you want, even if you decide to keep looking. A second trip can focus on whatever’s left, and nobody has to pick a house before the flight home.

If you’re buying sight unseen, you can go straight from the list and the video to an offer. If you visited, you can keep going from home after the trip. Either way, the offer has to cover funding, contingencies, inspection time, what’s included, closing and possession, and whether it depends on selling your Chicago home. Put every deadline in a shared calendar in the right time zone.

Get an independent inspection from someone who works for you. Ask about the AC, the roof, drainage, the pool equipment and any specialty systems, and bring in specialists when the findings call for it. Have your insurance quotes and real ownership costs in hand while they can still change the deal. The CFPB’s inspection guide is worth reading before you book one.

Read the HOA’s rules, finances, reserves, assessments and maintenance responsibilities, along with the title documents, liens and easements. Confirm any club membership separately. Your contract and Nevada’s rules set the actual review and cancellation deadlines, and I’ll keep track of them with you (Nevada’s common-interest-community law, the CFPB’s title guide).

I’ve handled more than 650 transactions, and on a move like this my job is to keep the house side simple and on schedule while your advisers and specialists handle their parts. Tell me your timing, whether you’re keeping the Chicago home and what your next home needs to do. That’s plenty to get started. A plane ticket can wait.

Decide with your advisers whether to sell in Chicago first, buy here first with the money already in place, or tie the purchase to your sale if the seller will agree. Each one changes whether you need temporary housing, storage or a stretch of paying for two homes. Plan for the Chicago closing slipping, not just for the version where everything goes right. If you’re keeping the Chicago home, decide who looks after which house from day one.

Then match the day you get the keys to the mover’s delivery window, with a place to stay and somewhere for your things to wait if those dates drift apart. Check gate access, room for the truck, elevator reservations if you’re in a building and any HOA moving rules at both ends. The day a 53-foot truck arrives is a bad day to find out it can’t make the turn into your street.

Before you arrive, confirm the utility providers for the Nevada address. Set up electricity, water, gas if the house has it, internet and insurance start dates, and make sure the AC works and you can get in. If the house will sit empty for a while, line up someone local to check on it and find out what your insurer requires.

Compare written moving estimates for the same inventory and services. Find out which carrier is doing the work and whether a broker is arranging it, and check its registration and complaint record through FMCSA’s mover checklist. Get the packing, storage, delivery window, access charges and payment terms in writing.

Choose your valuation coverage on purpose. Interstate movers have to offer both full-value and released-value protection, and released value pays no more than 60 cents per pound per item. That’s based on weight, not on what your things are worth. Full-value protection has its own terms and limits, so read them, especially for collections (FMCSA explains the two options).

Carry your IDs, closing documents, medication, chargers, car paperwork and a few days of essentials yourself. Photograph anything valuable before it’s packed, and check the delivery against the inventory. Keep the first few days simple. A cool house, a made bed and working Wi-Fi are a perfectly good start.

New residents generally need a Nevada driver’s license within 30 days of becoming a resident. Cars you own and drive here need to be registered within 30 days of becoming a resident or when you get your Nevada license, whichever comes first (DMV licensing questions, Nevada’s registration law). So an early license appointment pulls the car deadline forward too.

Get Nevada insurance and any required inspections done before the appointment, because out-of-state insurance won’t work for Nevada registration. Time the switch with your insurer so you’re never uncovered. These rules come with definitions and exceptions, and they don’t decide your income-tax domicile (the DMV’s new-resident guide).

Update your employer, banks, insurers, doctors and advisers directly. Mail forwarding helps, but it doesn’t replace those changes or the IRS’s own address update. Keep records of the move and your trips back, the way your advisers suggest, and make sure the new doctors, schools and home services are all in place.

Then put something fun on the calendar. Make a dinner reservation in your new neighborhood, find your morning walk, or invite the people you’ve been meaning to see.