Deal Estate - August 2010

08/30/10

A Deep-Discount Foreclosure Moves Fast, in Park Ridge

List Price: $348,480
Sale Price: NA
The Property: Impressive on the outside, this 13-room Park Ridge home might originally have been quite nice inside, too. But sometime during the foreclosure process, the interior was stripped...

Posted at 09:36 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/26/10

Got Teenagers? Here’s Your New Home(s)

List Price: $3.5 million
The Property: As the father of a teenager, I have to admire Milt and Sylvia Clow’s approach to living with adolescents. In the early 1940s, the Lake Forest couple built one house for themselves and a separate house across the driveway for their two teenagers...

Posted at 11:12 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/25/10

Two Reports Look at Property Tax Rates and Pessimism about Home Values

Residential property tax rates rose—in some cases, steeply—in 9 of 12 representative Cook County municipalities over the past decade, according to the Civic Federation. Meanwhile, taxes on commercial and industrial property went the other direction, declining in 11 of the 12 municipalities...

Posted at 02:14 PM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/23/10

Morton’s Cofounder Sells House with Huge Gourmet Kitchen

List Price: $1.699 million
Sale Price: $1.600 million
The Property: Klaus Fritsch, who, with Arnie Morton, launched Morton’s The Steakhouse in 1978, has sold the 13-room house he built in 1998.
“My house was for parties,” Fritsch says...

Posted at 09:24 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/19/10

Going Door to Door in Lake View

List Price: $1.995 million
The Property: When they set out to build a new home on a corner lot in Lake View eight years ago, the interior designer Tracy Hickman and Chad Munger moved the front door off Barry Avenue and around the corner onto Wolcott Avenue...

Posted at 02:26 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/18/10

Positive Signs for Some Relocated CHA Residents

When the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) started moving residents out of two South Side developments nine years ago, Susan Popkin, a public-housing expert at the Urban Institute, worried that it wouldn’t turn out well for the folks who got relocated. “I had a lot of concerns that these people would not manage,” she says, “that it was really going to [harm] them." But last week, Popkin and some colleagues...

Posted at 09:30 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/16/10

What $1 Million Buys Now—Suburban Edition

The Properties: Three suburban houses have each sold for exactly $1 million in the month since I reported what $1 million buys in the city. Let’s take a look at what suburban homebuyers are getting for that benchmark price right now...

Posted at 12:27 PM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/12/10

An Alpine Home in Wheaton

List Price: $1.69 million The Property: The rustic style of the exterior and main interior rooms of this Wheaton home are a tribute to the Vermont skiing club where Ed Morgan, who built the house with his wife, Sally, skied back in the 1950s...

Posted at 12:50 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

08/11/10

Zillow Maps the Downhill Run—and the Civic Federation Finds a Silver Lining

On Monday, Zillow, the online realty information service, released its report on changes in real-estate values during the second quarter of 2010. It showed that nationwide, home values were down 0.6 percent from the prior quarter and 3.2 percent from the year before. The Chicago area did better than the national average on one measure: prices were up here by 1.6 percent from the winter quarter...

Posted at 09:14 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/09/10

A Bargain Near Maxwell Street

List Price: $836,900
Sale Price: $801,000
The Property: This 14-room house was sold new four years ago for $1.207 million, and then sold again last week as a foreclosure for $801,000—or 33 percent off the 2006 price...

Posted at 09:47 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (2)

08/05/10

Lake Forest Estate is 99 Years New

List Price: $8.499 million
The Property: A grand estate built in 1911 but allowed to run down in later years, this stately brick mansion has been brought back to its exquisite origins—but with modern conveniences...

Posted at 01:41 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

08/04/10

Renters Snap Up Obamas' Former Condo

A four-bedroom condo that was home to Barack and Michelle Obama from 1993 to 2005 was supposed to go on the rental market this week after having some painting done—but a pair of renters grabbed it over the weekend. The first-floor condo is in Eastview Park, a gated block-long cluster of brick and limestone six-flats that run south from 53rd Street and face the lakefront park and Lake Shore Drive...

Posted at 07:55 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

08/02/10

Calamos Investment President Sells at a Loss in St. Charles

List Price: $2.5 million
Sale Price: $2.4 million
The Property: Nick Calamos, president of investments at Calamos Investment Management, a Naperville firm with $29.9 billion in assets under its control, last week sold a 21-room pondside home in St. Charles...

Posted at 10:22 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 2010