Deal Estate - March 2009

03/30/09

Sale of the Week: Filmmaker’s Home and Studio on Lucky Lake

List Price: $1.2 million
Sale Price: $750,000
The Property: For more than 30 years, this mid-century modern house and a much older barn were the home and movie studio of Ted Peshak. For the old Coronet Studios in Glenview, Peshak directed hundreds of educational movies, including What To Do on a Date, School Rules: How They Help Us, and...

Posted at 07:35 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (3)

03/26/09

On the Market: A Condo Overlooking Hyde Park’s Madison Park

List Price: $425,000
The Property: This three-bedroom condo in Hyde Park, with a small gourmet kitchen, lots of wood trim, and a long row of south-facing windows, can be found inside one of the neighborhood’s grandest buildings—which itself sits on private Madison...

Posted at 09:18 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/24/09

Housing Bulletin: Making Green Affordable

The Wheaton townhouse her client wanted to sell needed a bit of dressing up, but the real-estate agent Laura Reedy Stukel thought that putting away some of the sports memorabilia and buying fashionable new bedspreads was only a first step...

Posted at 09:40 PM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

03/23/09

Sale of the Week: A Gold Coast Look in River North

List Price: $4.35 million
Sale Price: $3.55 million
The Property: It may look like the successor to some of the great old Gold Coast mansions, but this slender four-story Georgian sits in a much newer neighborhood: the Kinzie Estates section of River North, which until ten years ago was a couple of blocks of defunct warehouses and surface parking lots south of what used to be...

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

03/19/09

On the Market: Energy-Saving Contemporary in Southport Corridor

List Price: $2.565 million
The Property: The builder Linda Sanchez put up this 4,800-square-foot, six-bedroom contemporary house in the Southport Corridor as the eco-friendly home she wishes she had built for herself eight years ago. At that time, when she was building...

Posted at 12:23 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

03/18/09

Housing Bulletin: Three Days of Foreclosure Auctions Next Week

The foreclosure auctions just keep on coming. For three days next week, Hudson & Marshall, a national auction company, will set up shop at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center and auction off more than 300 Chicago-area homes for the banks that have foreclosed on them...

Posted at 08:54 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

03/16/09

Sale of the Week: Second Foreclosure on Same Northbrook Block

List Price: $829,000
Sale Price: $752,000
The Property: In September 2006, this 14-room house on a corner lot in Northbrook was sold for $1.9 million. Five months later a lender recorded a lis pendens—a notice that a foreclosure suit would be filed against those buyers. That began a long process that included further actions by the lenders, the eviction of the residents...

Posted at 07:20 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/12/09

On the Market: Accessible and Allergen-Free in Highland Park

List Price: $999,000
The Property: An airy contemporary design by the architect James Nagle gives this 11-room Highland Park house a light and serene attitude. Daylight pours in from all the glass doors and windows, illuminating the open spaces and minimal detailing. From the glassy entryway that feels more like a brief passage between the front and back yards, to the oversized...

Posted at 09:26 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (5)

03/11/09

Housing Bulletin: Buy Now, Pay Later—and Some Deal Estate Tweets

Make no payments for six months! It’s a familiar come-on from carpet companies and car dealers. Now one Chicago homebuilder is offering the same deal, but without the hidden interest charges that inflate payments later...

Posted at 07:10 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

03/09/09

Sale of the Week: A Winnetka Builder Weathers the Storm

List Price: $1,595,000
Sale Price: $1,485,000
The Property: Never mind the house pictured here. It’s gone, demolished on March 5th, two days after the Winnetka-based Heritage Luxury Builders closed on its purchase of the site. The lot is first-rate: just under half an acre in east Winnetka, surrounded by impressive homes—both old and new—and with lakefront parks one and three blocks away...

Posted at 07:22 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)

03/05/09

On the Market: A House in the (River)woods

List Price: $2,599,000
The Property: A winding drive through the woods leads to this new 17-room house, designed in the style of a French country manor by the builder, Stephen Kozer, and his wife, Patty Kozer, an interior designer. The home’s well-chosen details start on the exterior, where carefully placed pieces of limestone give depth to the façade, especially in winter when snow and ice highlight the many crannies and ledges. A customized set of wrought-iron insets on the doors carry through to the wrought-iron railings of the main interior staircase.

Posted at 03:39 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

03/04/09

Housing Bulletin: Giving Up the Ghosts

Together, the many empty, unsold builder houses sprinkled around Chicago and the suburbs constitute a kind of scattered-site ghost town. But in the past few weeks, there have been signs of life—in the form of short sales and huge preforeclosure price cuts that have put living families into some of those homes, and that may do the same for many more in the near future...