Left Adrift
Forty condo associations, mostly on Chicago’s North Side, have found themselves floating in the backwaters of red ink after alleging they were victims of a monumental condo management fraud
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On the Market: A Factory Remade in Evanston
List Price: $799,000
The Property: The downtown, urban look of this onetime metal-stamping factory, now a residence, belies its neighborhood, a charming part of Evanston where the streets are lined with neat medium-size Victorians and deep front lawns. Tucked…
Housing Bulletin: Chicago’s Casa Bonita
On Ridge Avenue in Rogers Park—just north of Touhy Avenue and south of St. Scholastica High School—sits that wonderland of terra cotta called Casa Bonita. Its towers, crests, pediments, and other white clay accents signal that when the building went up in 1928, this wasn’t merely a place to live, but to live large…
Sale of the Week: Twin Peaks – Chicago
List Price (41st floor): $2.25 million
Sale Price: $2.1 million
List Price (37th floor): $2.45 million
Sale Price: $2.125 million
The Properties: Last week, two condominiums at the Water Tower Residences (at 180 East Pearson Street in Chicago) were sold within two days of one another; the two condos were quite similar in size and sale price—and in the views they…
On the Market: Wright Redone Right in Oak Park
List Price: $1.295 million
The Property: This house, one of a trio that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in his off-hours while employed by Louis Sullivan in the early 1890s, has been extensively renovated and expanded, all with a careful eye on the home’s history…
Housing Bulletin: Sellers, Stay Home
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…
Sale of the Week: Let the Sun Shine In, Lincoln Park
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…
On the Market: Brand-New in Old Irving Park (Chicago)
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…
Housing Bulletin: Refocusing on Foreclosures
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..
Sale of the Week: Wax In, Wax Out at Chicago’s Olympia Centre
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…