What’s keeping people from buying homes right now? Are they worried that a property’s value will drop after they buy it? Or are they wondering what will happen to the economy when we have a new president? Or maybe they are scared that if they buy a condo, they won’t be allowed to swim naked in the...

" /> What’s keeping people from buying homes right now? Are they worried that a property’s value will drop after they buy it? Or are they wondering what will happen to the economy when we have a new president? Or maybe they are scared that if they buy a condo, they won’t be allowed to swim naked in the...

" /> What’s keeping people from buying homes right now? Are they worried that a property’s value will drop after they buy it? Or are they wondering what will happen to the economy when we have a new president? Or maybe they are scared that if they buy a condo, they won’t be allowed to swim naked in the...

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Housing Bulletin—Inventive Incentives


What’s keeping people from buying homes right now? Are they worried that a property’s value will drop after they buy it? Or are they wondering what will happen to the economy when we have a new president? Or maybe they are scared that if they buy a condo, they won’t be allowed to swim naked in the…

On The Market—A Big Green Rehab in Highland Park

List price: $2.8 million
The Property: With an indoor pool, a typically hard-to-heat two-story living room and foyer, and a total of 9,000 square feet of indoor space, this Highland Park house used to be an energy hog. But thanks to the installation of solar and geothermal energy collectors, it now consumes a…

Housing Bulletin—Behind the Fall in Round Lake

In most of the Chicago area, the number of home sales is down about 30 to 40 percent this year, according to MRED, the real-estate data service. In the Round Lake section of Lake County, it’s down 77.9 percent. That means only a little more than one-fifth as many houses have sold there in the past 12 months as did in the prior year. And some agents in town say…

On The Market—Spacious Cape Cod in Wilmette

List Price: $1,099,000
The Property: Unlike ostentatious new houses that flaunt their thousands of square feet with soaring roofs and phallic turrets, this Cape Cod–style house in Wilmette is a classic 1950s exercise in self-restraint, with a taupe exterior and a sheltered porch. The broad, low-hanging roof suggests a modest house huddles beneath, but, in fact, there are…

On The Market—Downsizing in Lincoln Park

List Price: $1.495 million
The Property: Nine years ago, this redstone townhouse from the early 1890s and its neighbor to the east were coupled together in an unusual approach to expandable housing. In 1999, when their family of five was outgrowing the house on the east (where they had lived since 1980), Susan and Tom Kuczmarski bought this house to…