08/28/08

On The Market—Glen Ellyn’s Warwood Farm

List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: Prominent on its hilltop site and looking like a hen among chicks, this Arts and Crafts–style mansion is surrounded by the ranch houses and other smaller homes that now occupy all but two acres of its original 300 acres of...

Posted at 11:24 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/27/08

Housing Bulletin—One Chicago Seller’s Limited-Time Offer

To save money on commissions to real-estate agents, Rachel and Mark Bickenbach have been trying to sell their Clybourn Avenue loft themselves this summer. They put it on craigslist.com and advertised it in the Chicago Tribune and the Reader—but all they heard was...

Posted at 08:13 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (11)

08/25/08

Sale of the Week—Traded Again in Southeast Ravenswood

List Price: $2.399 million
Sale Price: $2.25 million
The Property: So far in its short life, this 14-room house, built in 2002, has been sold four times, most recently on August 11th. Those sellers had owned the place for just 11 months...

Posted at 07:42 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/21/08

On The Market—Prairie Glass in Oak Park

List Price: $990,000
The Property: Eben Ezra Roberts, who designed some 200 buildings in Oak Park, was the architect of this 100-year-old residence (known as the Charles Schwerin House), as well as its neighbor (the Charles F. Lorenzen House). Roberts fronted this house with a broad, shading porch and...

Posted at 10:12 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/20/08

Housing Bulletin—Good News for Chicago Condos

With all the reports (including many from Deal Estate) about a vast inventory of unsold condos, it’s a surprise to learn that urban condos are the best-performing part of Chicago’s six-county real-estate market. In the latest release of local market information by the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR), the median price of a home dropped in five counties and stayed flat in Cook County. The declines ranged from 1.9 percent in Lake County to...

Posted at 09:18 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/18/08

Sale of the Week—A Robin’s Nest on Lake Shore Drive

List Price: $3.199 million
Sale Price: $2.75 million
The Property: In the late 1960s, when the construction executive Albert Robin developed The Carlyle, the 40-story condo building at 1040 North Lake Shore Drive, he set aside a two-story aerie for himself and his family. Robin—a benefactor of Roosevelt University, which named its Schaumburg campus after him—died in...

Posted at 07:41 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/14/08

On the Market—A West Loop Loft

List Price: $560,000
The Property: This two-bedroom loft has a supremely contemporary sensibility, as evidenced by the gleaming metal kitchen cabinets (intended for a high-school science lab), the black granite tepee-shaped fireplace, and a sleek, elongated bathroom sink.

Marc Lawrence, an executive at Lawrence Foods (his family’s bakery and food-ingredients manufacturing company in Elk Grove Village), bought the space in...

Posted at 10:38 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/13/08

Housing Bulletin—Zero-Energy Homes on Chicago’s Far South Side

On what was once a weedy parcel of land in Veterans Park—situated on Chicago's South Side near where the Skyway crosses above 95th Street—Bernie Schmidt has built the first of what he hopes will be 20 midsize homes that use no electricity from the utility grid. If completed on the linear plot of land adjacent to rows of tidy bungalows, the subdivision, called Solar Verde Estates, will be the city's first zero-energy block...

Posted at 08:56 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/11/08

Sale of the Week—Get Width It in Ravenswood

List Price: $2.05 million
Sale Price: $2.35 million
The Property: Not yet finished but already sold, this raised 12-room house is super-wide by city standards: a full 40 feet, on a lot that is 43 feet wide. “It’s totally suburban,” says Brent Meder, whose Meder Properties built it, as he walks across...

Posted at 06:20 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (17)

08/07/08

On The Market—Lake Forest’s Chimneys Cottage, Reborn

List Price: $11,995,000
The Property: Originally built in the 1890s by a retired Confederate general as a small summer cottage book-ended by two chimneys, this house grew in several directions over the years. By the time Tim and Gail  Anderson bought it in 1999...

Posted at 10:01 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/06/08

Housing Bulletin— A Gloomy Forecast from the University of Illinois’ Geoffrey Hewings

On Monday I talked with Geoffrey Hewings, a professor of geography, economics, and urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The director of REAL, the university’s Regional Economics Applications Laboratory, Hewings tracks residential real estate across the state; his forecasts are part of the Illinois Association of Realtors’ periodic reports. In the organization’s latest report, released at the end of July, Hewings predicted that...

Posted at 07:45 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/04/08

Sale of the Week—Surf and Turf in Lake View

List Price: $2,349,000
Sale Price: $2,235,000
The Property: One of ten new high-end houses that front on a private greensward where a street would ordinarily be, this 13-room Italianate brick house has six bedrooms, five-plus baths, and two fireplaces. An 11th house that also shares the common green, along with a clubhouse with a swimming pool and...

Posted at 08:45 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)