Chicago catching up fast as next Silicon Valley hub

With California's real estate over saturating fast, Chicago is poised to be next best option among other potential cities to be future Silicon Valley tech hubs.

Chicago leads the race among Dallas, Austin, Seattle and Miami cities, which are considered to become next Silicon Valleys and offer huge potential for real estate investments. The diversity in the Chicago economy makes it an unavoidable destination for global technology companies. The city is already known for its tech community.

Over four million workers contribute about $500billion per annum to Chicago economy. Chicago is home to several industrial verticals no sector is accounting for over 24 percent employment. This shows how widely Chicago economy is diversified.

Chicago young population is highly educated as over 75 percent of students complete their graduation and 36 percent become post-graduates (PG) taking Chicago city three times higher than the national average.

if one accepts the new tech age concept that diversity drives innovation and then Chicago qualifies to be next hub for the IT industry as the city is known for its diversity and it leads in real estate, social good incubators, healthcare, technology, food accelerators sectors to name a few. The tech community further holds support to the diversity of Chicago City.

During the past two decades, Silicon Valley remains as the undisputed global tech hub. But, the over saturating California is paving the way for other cities to emerge as next Silicon Valley tech hubs.

According to a recent study done by Coldwell Banker, the heart of Silicon Valley has becomethe most expensive business space in the world. The rental costs in Los Altos, CA, are skyrocketing making it unaffordable for techies. The average rent for a single-bedroom is hovering at $2,000 per month.

The emerging tech hubs should have certain characteristics such as low housing costs, major IT companies' presence, availability of VC funding, low unemployment rate, availability of young talent pool, etc.

Chicago is already a major market for real estate in the US after Silicon Valley. The city is even ahead of Seattle. The population numbers started showing upward figures from the past one year. This shows an increasing number of jobs in the industry. Chicago is already home to major technology companies and mostly venture capitalists (VC) funded ones.

Chicago is considered to be a haven for VC funding. The average salary in Chicago technology sector is over 65 percent higher than other industry verticals. The real estate sector is also huge and affordable for the industry as the price is increasing over 10 percent annually. All these positive factors put together make the Affordability Index of 182.3 for Chicago city on ULI report.