07/30/07

Deal of the Week-Penthouse With its own Pool

List Price: $4.25 million
Sale Price: $6 million

The Property: A River North penthouse with huge windows and decks on every side that maximize dramatic all-directions views of the city, this 18th-floor spread also has its own indoor lap pool, very likely the city's highest pool for an individual...

Posted at 07:42 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (4)

07/26/07

New On the Market-Prairie Grandeur in Evanston

List Price: $3,700,000

The Property: A lovely brick Prairie-style mansion that faces Lake Michigan across a quiet park, this 13-room house with numerous front windows seems designed to bask in the morning sun as it rises over the water.

The house was built in 1909, designed by the Prairie architects Tallmadge and Watson. (Thomas Eddy Tallmadge coined the phrase "The Chicago School" to...

Posted at 05:14 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/25/07

Housing Bulletin-Triple Threat to Big Developments

Three proposed residential developments in three different parts of the city have been put into slowdown mode in recent weeks, all thanks to new aldermen elected in the spring.

Aside from the fact that two of the projects have prolific architect Lucien Lagrange attached, there are no connections among the players on the three projects and the three aldermen apparently acted independently. But there's certainly a case of "two's company, three's a trend" here: Aldermen are asking developers to look extra-hard at preserving historical buildings and settings.

Two weeks ago, 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly announced he'd like to save the Lakeshore Athletic Club at 850 N. Lake Shore Drive. Fifield Cos., which has a contract to buy the gracious 1927 building from...

Posted at 09:00 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/23/07

Sale of the Week-Pillar of Wicker Park

List Price: $2,500,000
Sale Price: $2,466,700

The Property: Once one of Wicker Park's grandest mansions, this enormous Second Empire-style home from 1879 was divided into apartments early in the 20th Century and stayed that way until now. A buyer, not yet identified by the seller or public records, made a $2.46 million deal with seller Mike Conover on...

Posted at 10:52 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/19/07

New On the Market-Modernist Serenity in Glencoe

List Price: $2,150,000

The Property: Elegant in its spareness, this five-bedroom in Glencoe is a quintessential mid-century modernist home in mint condition. Designed by the great Chicago architects Keck & Keck in 1960 for a member of the Florsheim family, the house has all the Kecks' characteristic simplicity and embrace of its natural setting.

Distinguished from the...

Posted at 10:06 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/18/07

Housing Bulletin-The Money's on Lisle

Four Chicago suburbs got the nod from Money magazine on its 2007 list of Best Places to Live in the U.S., released on Monday, and while they're all perfectly lovely places to live, the choices show the editors' fondness for quiet, outlying bedroom communities.

Which might be precisely what Money's readers prefer; after all, they're looking for a place to spend their housing dollars in an economy that seems to have lost its spark. So why not put your money where it (and you) will be safe?

The Chicago area's top finisher was Lisle, at 20th. Next was Libertyville, at 52nd,

Posted at 08:17 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/16/07

Sale of the Week - Pleasures of Kenilworth

List Price: $3,550,000
Sale Price: $3,400,000

The Property: Almost perfectly situated in tony Kenilworth, with prestigious public elementary and high schools within a few blocks' walk and a picturesque park right across the street, this new 20-room home has the charm and hand-wrought details of an old-time house in the North Shore village, but a contemporary...

Posted at 10:21 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/12/07

New on the Market-Lake Forest Mansion

List Price: $4,375,000

The Property: Not only is this elegant ten-room mansion situated in upscale Lake Forest, but it sits in the most prestigious part of town, a neighborhood known as VELF: Very East Lake Forest. But in 2005, when Dan and Wanda O'Rourke bought the place for $2.9 million, the house was showing its "age." Built in 1990, it lacked some of the craftwork and amenities...

Posted at 02:12 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (7)

07/11/07

Deal Estate Flash!-A Big Deal in Lake Bluff

List Price: $25 million
Sale Price: $16 million
On Tuesday, the developer Orren Pickell bought a princely Lake Bluff estate-a 24-room mansion on 21 acres-for $16 million. The estate's sellers, Ron and Pat Friedman, had listed the place for sale almost six years ago at $25 million and held firm to their asking price all that time, only to finally sell it at a...

Posted at 06:57 PM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/11/07

Housing Bulletin-Click Here to Buy a Condo

(blog updated below)
There may be an unusually large number of people using personal digit assistants (PDAs) in the Loop on Thursday evening, but they won't be checking their e-mail or the sports scores. They will be buying condos.

The developer American Invsco, which is converting the 47-story apartment high-rise at 200 North Dearborn Street to condos, hopes to sell all of the building's 270-plus...

Posted at 06:12 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/09/07

Sale of the Week-Double-Size Wheeling Condo

List Price: $1 million
Sale Price: $1,106,506

The Property: By combining two corner-unit condos into one 4,000-square-foot layout, a pair of senior citizens looking for a low-maintenance home created what is now far and away the highest-priced home in Wheeling. Gloria and Donald Cooper sold their house of 20 years in Riverwoods this year. "We're too old to...

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

07/05/07

New on the Market - Chicago's Gold Coast

List Price: $4,499,999

The Property: This four-story townhouse on Astor Street is a stunner both outside and in: although the exterior-with its ornately detailed brick, copper, and stone façade-dates to 1888, the interior got a complete overhaul in 2007. The home and two of its neighbors were designed by the great Chicago architect John Wellborn Root, who died of pneumonia in the townhouse north of this one in 1891. A fourth Root-designed townhouse, which stood south of this place, was demolished in the early 1960s to make way for an apartment high-rise.

The artist and concert pianist Andrew...

Posted at 12:52 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/04/07

Housing Bulletin- Land of Liberty

To mark the Independence Day holiday, Deal Estate examined sales data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois to find out how many homes were sold in the Chicago region on streets with names that evoke the spirit of '76.

• Number of homes sold over the past 12 months on streets named Liberty: 59  (including two on Liberty Bell Lane-in Libertyville, no less)
• On streets named Independence: 27 (including the most expensive of today's offerings, a house on Independence Avenue in Glenview that went for $2.25 million)
• On Constitution and Colonial: 8 each
• On Patriot and Colony: 5 each
• On Declaration: 3 (all of them in Plainfield)

Among the founding fathers:

• Homes sold on streets...

  Posted at 07:35 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/02/07

Sale of the Week - Roscoe Village, Chicago

List Price: $1,249,000
Sale Price: $1,225,000

The Property: Though this eight-room house looks like a Roscoe Village old-timer, it's actually been around for only seven years. "Part of the aesthetic I come from is to build new homes that are consistent with the architecture of the neighborhood," says Ed Donley, the home's architect, builder, owner, and...

Posted at 07:43 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (4)