Boost Your Home’s Value
The real-estate market may be in the doldrums, but it’s the best time in years to improve your home. Here are your smartest strategies, no matter when you plan to sell
Ad Categories: Real Estate
If You Want to Sell This Summer
How to make your home more energy efficient, refresh instead of remodel, and ratchet up the curb appeal
If You Want to Sell in a Few Years
How to deal with the mechanicals and roof; splurge a little on your kitchen and bathrooms; and create more living space in your attic, basement, or backyard.
If You Want to Stay for a Decade-Plus
How to plan for your needs as you age, make large-scale improvements in energy efficiency, and reconfigure spaces to accommodate multiple generations
A Sophisticated Gold Coast Condo
List Price: $3.3 million
The Property: In Chicago’s toddlin’ times, an era when train travel was the height of elegance, the Ambassador East and Ambassador West hotels were regular stops for movie stars, politicians, and society’s elite. Even Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 cross-country classic, North by Northwest, included a stop at the Ambassador East…
Life in the Slow Lane: Get Used To It
A new federal report has provided yet another sign that Chicago’s housing market is in the slow lane on the road to recovery. The report, issued last week with the government’s monthly housing scorecard, noted that, during the past year, the area saw a 1.5 percent increase in the number of homes at risk of foreclosure, rising from 125,400 homes in January 2011 to 127,300 homes in January 2012…
Rodkin on Buying a Two-Flat as a First Home
Readers ask questions, and our real estate expert answers. This week, readers named Leanne and Mark from Uptown ask if it’s still true that a two-flat is the best place to start homeownership in Chicago.
Foreclosure Comes to Exclusive Woodley Road
List Price: $1.549 million
Sale Price: $1.537 million
The Property: An 11,600-square-foot mansion on Woodley Road outside Winnetka has the dubious distinction of being the first foreclosure sale in that enclave of prominent families, high-level executives, and other eminent people…
A Can-Do Condo Builder in Kenwood
List Prices: $199,000 to $369,000
The Property: When work halted on a boom-years condo project meant to fill an unsightly gap in a block of historical homes in Kenwood, Lewis Korompilas spotted an opportunity…
Federal Vouchers Will Help 100 Homeless Cook County Veterans
About six months from now, 100 homeless military veterans in Cook County will have a place to live, thanks to a $760,872 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Those 100 vets represent a 55 percent increase in the number of Cook County veterans helped into housing through HUD’s Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program (VASH)…