Deal Estate - December 2010

12/30/10

From Two-Flat to Single-Family in Wicker Park

List Price: $1,699,000
The Property: The couple who converted this circa 1889 two-flat in Wicker Park into a single-family home were transferred out of the country shortly after the rehab was finished. The home they left behind has a handsome Victorian brick exterior wrapped around a spacious and sunny renovated interior that retains a few nice vintage details...

Posted at 11:43 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/29/10

How to Buy a Foreclosure, Part 2: A Specialized Retirement Account

If your own housing is secure—knock on wood—you may have been watching all these bargain-priced foreclosures from the sidelines, thinking that because you’re not in the market for a new home, you couldn’t take advantage of an appealing investment opportunity. What you may not have known is that there’s a type of IRA that lets you use your retirement funds to buy, rehab, and rent investment property, including foreclosures...

Posted at 11:37 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/27/10

Equity International CEO Sells Fast on Gold Coast

List Price: $2.95 million
Sale Price: $2.85 million
The Property: It took just 11 days for Gary Garrabrant, the chief executive officer of the Chicago-based real-estate-investment giant Equity International, and his wife, Susan, to sell their condo on the 12th floor of a vintage building on Astor Street...

Posted at 9:30 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/23/10

An Artfully Crafted Loft in River North

List Price: $1.199 million
The Property: Set amidst a mix of new high-rises and houses on the western edge of River North is a handsome old brick loft building that was the Stiffel Lamp factory in the neighborhood’s former life as a manufacturing district...

Posted at 10:43 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

12/22/10

How to Buy a Foreclosure: A Rehab Loan

With foreclosures still proliferating in and around Chicago, sharp buyers can spot some great bargains. If the property is damaged, though, most mortgage lenders won’t finance the purchase. That’s why some buyers are now turning to a specialized loan called a 203K, based on the future value of the house, post-repairs...

Posted at 10:24 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (3)

12/20/10

A Lost Decade, in Bannockburn

List Price: $1,349,900
Sale Price: $1,025,000
The Property: This 14-room Georgian home on four acres in Bannockburn was sold on December 10th for precisely the same amount it fetched ten years earlier...

Posted at 9:14 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/16/10

Dome Sweet Home, in Lincoln Park

List Price: $3.2 million
The Property: In the early 1990s, the psychologist Chuck Anderson and his wife, Dale Carol Anderson, an interior designer, commissioned this classically styled home for a large, triangular residential lot on what was then the western frontier of Lincoln Park—just east of the formerly industrial Clybourn Avenue. Their architect, Pappageorge Haymes, put the house on one half of the site and a walled garden on the other, with a pillared outdoor rotunda connecting the two...

Posted at 9:40 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (5)

12/15/10

Housing Advocates Get a Whiff of TIF

After two years of trying, Chicago’s affordable-housing activists may be just a month away from tapping into the city’s supposedly vast Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds. Depending on the outcome of work that’s going on now to bridge the gap between two competing ordinances, this could mean between about $50 million to $100 million a year that would go toward buying up foreclosures and rehabbing them into affordable living units...

Posted at 9:51 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/13/10

Glencoe Joins the Cavalcade of Half-Price Mansion Sales

List Price: $2.05 million
Sale Price: $2.05 million
The Property: This has been the year of the half-priced new mansion, including a February purchase in Lake Forest, an April buy in Glencoe, and my item last week about a sale in Winnetka...

Posted at 9:38 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/09/10

Mid-Century Modern on the Chain O’ Lakes

List Price: $560,000
The Property: Viewed from the street, this mid-century modern home nestled into a waterfront site on the Chain O’ Lakes barely makes a visual ripple. That’s because it’s entirely oriented in the other direction: the wide expanse of glass at the back off the house provides views of a broad sweep of lawn leading down to Meyers Bay, which rolls out to Pistakee Lake.

Posted at 1:51 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/08/10

Elysian Bucks Condo Slowdown with More High-Priced Closings

Although most of the downtown condo game remains slow, the developers of Chicago’s Elysian are playing in a whole other ballpark. Last week alone, the sales of seven condominiums there closed for a combined $36.3 million...

Posted at 10:01 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

12/06/10

Airline Exec Flies Into Winnetka for Half Price

List Price: $2.585 million
Sale Price: $2.335 million
The Property: A marketing executive at the newly merged United–Continental Airlines bought this new 15-room house in Winnetka for $2.335 million—just 52 percent of the $4,478,500 mortgage that the home’s developers took out on the property four years ago...

Posted at 9:38 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/02/10

An Upgraded Greystone in North Center

List Price: $1.185 million
The Property: Thoroughly renovated and loaded with great finishes, this century-old greystone in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood is half a block from Bell Elementary, one of the city’s finest public grade schools, and three blocks from Lane Technical High School...

Posted at 10:17 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 2010