More Auction Action, on Two FrontsMore Auction Action, on Two FrontsMore Auction Action, on Two Fronts
More Auction Action, on Two Fronts
The seller of an 80-year-old Winnetka mansion has no idea what her lakefront estate might be worth in today’s market, so she is putting it up for auction. And several builders who want to unload their new houses or vacant land have signed on with a new online real-estate auction service. Both auctions are sources of potential bargains for buyers—although in the case of the Winnetka auction…
List Price: $1.699 million
Sale Price: $1.625 million
The Property: In April 2003, Josh and Dawn Denberg paid $875,000 for a house with an extra-large lot on a charming brick street in Wilmette. (While the house, built in 1917, is clearly by a Prairie school designer, no one knows for sure the name of the architect.) The couple then…
List Price: $3.295 million
The Property: Set behind a 15-foot-tall privacy hedge, this house in western Northbrook has 18 rooms, a pool and a tennis court, and an outdoor kitchen big enough to cater a swim meet or a tennis match. The contemporary-styled home has a monumental entry flanked by two hefty…
Now that we have pretty much accepted that our homes are worth less than they used to be, a question comes up: If the value of my home is dropping, will my property tax bill do the same?
Short answer: Not now, not for a few years, and very likely not at all.
For the long answer, it’s important first to grasp…
List Price: $2.99 million
Sale Price: $2.88 million
The Property: Gunther Trieb, the new president of the Sears brands Kenmore, Craftsman, and DieHard, has bought this 17-room mansion in the heart of Winnetka. The sale closed August 25th, four days…
List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: Prominent on its hilltop site and looking like a hen among chicks, this Arts and Crafts–style mansion is surrounded by the ranch houses and other smaller homes that now occupy all but two acres of its original 300 acres of…
To save money on commissions to real-estate agents, Rachel and Mark Bickenbach have been trying to sell their Clybourn Avenue loft themselves this summer. They put it on craigslist.com and advertised it in the Chicago Tribune and the Reader—but all they heard was…
List Price: $2.399 million
Sale Price: $2.25 million
The Property: So far in its short life, this 14-room house, built in 2002, has been sold four times, most recently on August 11th. Those sellers had owned the place for just 11 months…
List Price: $990,000
The Property: Eben Ezra Roberts, who designed some 200 buildings in Oak Park, was the architect of this 100-year-old residence (known as the Charles Schwerin House), as well as its neighbor (the Charles F. Lorenzen House). Roberts fronted this house with a broad, shading porch and…
With all the reports (including many from Deal Estate) about a vast inventory of unsold condos, it’s a surprise to learn that urban condos are the best-performing part of Chicago’s six-county real-estate market. In the latest release of local market information by the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR), the median price of a home dropped in five counties and stayed flat in Cook County. The declines ranged from 1.9 percent in Lake County to…
