Do you want to help heal the U.S. economy? Don’t list your house for sale this year.
That’s the main point I took away from the Chicago Association of Realtors’ Regional Economic Forecast 2009, held January 15th at the Palmer House. The panel, which I moderated, featured presentations by three economists and a leading Chicago real-estate analyst. The consensus among them was…
List Price: $3 million
Sale Price: $2.925 million
The Property: On a street in Lincoln Park where the homes are tightly packed, this very contemporary house appears to stretch out comfortably in all directions. That’s thanks in part to its unusual lot—90 feet wide by 99 feet deep, compared to the city norm of 25 by 125—but also to the work of its designer, the noted architecture firm of…
List Price: $2.49 million
The Property: This new 21-room house in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighborhood narrows as it goes back to maximize the entry of daylight into family spaces. Handsomely outfitted inside and out with modern finishes that always stay on the preferred side of the line between…
On Monday, I participated in a panel discussion at Roosevelt University sponsored by the Chicago Rehab Network. The panel had convened primarily to discuss the future of affordable housing in Chicago. “There’s nothing more stabilizing than a safe home,” said Kevin Jackson, Chicago Rehab’s executive director, in his opening remarks. “Housing is..
List Price: $1,299,000
Sale Price: $1,075,000
The Property: H. Fisk Johnson, the fifth-generation CEO of S. C. Johnson—the Racine, Wisconsin, consumer-products company behind Raid!, Pledge, Glade, and other brands—has sold his condo on the 51st floor of Olympia Centre (that’s the tapered red tower, at Chicago and Michigan avenues, with Neiman Marcus at its base). Johnson has had a home in the building for 20 years. The seven-room condo has two…
List Price: $3.6 million
The Property: The immense living room of this fifth-floor condo at the northern tip of the Gold Coast offers a majestic view over the lawns, soccer fields, and statuary in the southern stretches of Lincoln Park. “We thought of all that as our own front yard,” says John Benjamin, who, with his wife, Esther, has lived in this condo in the 13-story confection at 1550 North State Parkway for about 17 years (the building itself dates back…
In 2008, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, developers called off 13 downtown condo projects, pulling a total of 2,078 housing units out of an already log-jammed condo market. (Only one of those buildings—Burnham Pointe, at 720 South Clark Street—was already under construction; it was sold to an apartment developer.) While the cancellations aren’t necessarily happy news…
List Price: $4.75 million
Sale Price: $5.05 million
The Property: This 13-room residence, with its ornate carved limestone and brick façade, stands among the new mega-homes along Burling, Orchard, and Howe streets south of Armitage Avenue in Chicago. The house has six bedrooms, six-plus baths, two fireplaces, and..
Every Thursday except holidays, I post a short tour of a home that is for sale, including the sellers’ asking price. But the asking price is only half of the story, as the past year’s market drop has clarified for all of us; the other half is the final selling price.
So, as Paul Harvey would say, now here’s the rest of the story on several properties I posted on Thursdays in 2008…
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List Price: $1,450,000
Sale Price: $1,011,500
The Property: “It’s a home that was built for the kind of people who loved the Rat Pack,” says Dan Delano, the real estate agent who recently sold this Park Ridge house, built in 1961. “I thought that would be a selling point, but I guess we live in a world of…
