Deal Estate - June 2011

06/30/11

The Good Neighbor in Bucktown

List Price: $1.595 million
The Property: When Stacy Nigrelli and Ronald Berlind were building their home in Bucktown in the early 1990s, the neighborhood wasn’t yet a major hot spot, and the couple consciously tried to make their place fit in among the old-timers on the block...

Posted at 9:30 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/29/11

Legislators, Realtors Oppose Down-Payment Proposal

Members of Congress, real-estate associations, and some civil-rights groups are pushing back against a plan from federal regulators that would mandate a 20 percent down payment from many would-be homeowners. The groups are headed toward an August 1 deadline for comment on a proposal that would create a so-called qualified residential mortgage (QRM), which would require homeowners to have a one-fifth equity stake in their residence—an investment (the thinking goes) that might make them less willing to give up the home in tough financial times...

Posted at 9:32 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/27/11

A Record Sale in Lake Bluff

List Price: $6.39 million
Sale Price: $5.5 million
The Property: The buyer of a secluded lakefront mansion on part of an old Armour family estate in Lake Bluff appears to have paid more for it than anyone has ever spent for a private home in that North Shore town...

Posted at 9:15 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/23/11

Boystown Condo Shows Pride of Ownership

List Price: $480,000
The Property: The spacious sixth-floor terrace of this condo at the Dakota would make a nice perch from which to watch Sunday’s Pride Parade wend its way through the streets of Boystown. On any other day, the terrace is also the spot to take in a 180-degree view that encompasses Lake Michigan, the green roofs of the Center on Halsted, a neighboring police station, and the big “Chicago Cubs” sign poised above the center field bleachers at Wrigley Field...

Posted at 10:35 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/21/11

Tyson Chandler Sells Former Northfield Home

Nine days ago, Tyson Chandler was celebrating an NBA championship after his Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat in a six-game series. Yesterday, Chandler enjoyed another victory of sorts: after four years, he finally sold his former home in Northfield...

Posted at 9:51 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/20/11

Prairie Avenue Survivor Gets a New Champion

List Price: $599,000
Sale Price: $450,000
The Property: The Wood-Maxey-Boyd house, a Prairie Avenue treasure from 1885, has a new owner—only its third...

Posted at 9:56 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/16/11

Minding a Hinsdale Manor—and Former Groupon Chief Lists His Kenwood Home

List Price: $6.72 million
The Property: The blocks south and southeast of Hinsdale’s downtown are replete with imposing homes of various eras and styles. Set among them is this new English manor, whose brick and timber Tudor façade could pass for a much older home...

Posted at 10:40 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/15/11

Getting Wright Right

Brown like the nearby tree trunks and terminating in a raised porch that blends indoors and out, the George Millard house in Highland Park exemplifies how well a residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright can coexist with its surroundings. Now the family that has spent 19 years restoring the home is ready to move on.

Posted at 10:35 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/13/11

A Hollywood Bungalow in Ravenswood Gardens

List Price: $1.25 million
Sale Price: $1.2 million
The Property: From the outside, this 1920 house in Ravenswood Gardens looks a lot like countless other homes in the city’s bungalow belt...

Posted at 9:15 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (2)

06/09/11

The Marshall Plan, Gold Coast

List Price: $3.175 million
The Property: Once known as the Stewart Apartments, 1200 North Lake Shore Drive is a Gold Coast classic. Designed by Benjamin Marshall and completed in 1913, it has a neoclassical Adam-style façade and offers, from its upper floors, spectacular views toward Lake Michigan...

Posted at 10:53 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/08/11

Foes from a 1984 Project Square Off Again Over Webster Square

If it seems like the struggle over plans to redevelop the shuttered Lincoln Park Hospital as a mix of homes, retail, and offices has been going on a long time, get this: some of the players say it’s rooted, in part, in a struggle 27 years ago over a residential project about six blocks away...

Posted at 9:15 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/06/11

A Cautionary Foreclosure Tale from Naperville

List Price: $825,000
Sale Price: $781,000
The Property: Although buying, fixing, and reselling foreclosures has become a hot investment prospect, this Naperville home may stand as a cautionary tale...

Posted at 9:15 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/02/11

Roscoe Village’s Splendor in the Glass

List Price: $750,000
The Property: A onetime corner candy store in Chicago got a very hip update when its corner-wrapping windows were replaced with a quirky mosaic of glass block. It’s a visual embodiment of what’s happened throughout the Roscoe Village neighborhood over the past two decades, as that former working-class community got an infusion of contemporary cool...

Posted at 10:20 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/01/11

For Sale: A Potential Penthouse Above the Loop

If you thought Rahm Emanuel has had a hard time getting an unwelcome tenant out of his Ravenswood house, imagine what it will take to turn the secret penthouse at the top of 200 North Dearborn into a home: to create what could be your terrace, you would first have to move an air-handling machine that weighs several tons...

Posted at 10:29 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 2011