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On the Market—A New (but Authentic) Craftsman in Wilmette

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List Price: $1.795 million
The Property: You could say that the architect John Crittenden and the builder Dan Cohan are “Stickleys” for detail. That is, they are devotees of Gustav Stickley, the early 20th-century American architect who led the Craftsman movement in residential architecture, a descendant of the Arts & Crafts movement in England.

On a teardown lot in Wilmette, Crittenden and Cohan—whose company is called Round Peg—created a new house that, except for the two-car garage out front, might pass for an original Craftsman, with its abundant use of natural materials, its built-in benches and bookcases, and its reliance on daylight as an essential piece of the residents’…

Housing Bulletin—The Resale Condo Squeeze Play

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A few years back, when investing in residential real estate seemed like a fast money-maker, two guys went in together on three condos at the Metropolis, a terra cotta-clad building at State and Monroe Streets that was being converted from office and retail into 169 condos.

But when the condos were ready for their investors to take possession, the market had changed and the guys couldn’t sell their three units as fast as they had counted on; they ended up in foreclosure. This month, a real-estate agent working for the guys’ lenders sold one of those condos, a two-bedroom unit with parking included that the investors had originally bought for $310,000. The new sale price: $285,000. “That’s hands down a bargain,” says Peter Boland, the @properties agent who sold the condo for…

Sale of the Week—Hinsdale Record-Breaker

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List Price: $5.3 million
Sale Price: $5.2 million
The Property: This stone and stucco house in Hinsdale unfolds like a catalog of exquisite details. The bird-beak roof points and stone-arched entries are complemented inside by a stone fireplace in the foyer, a wood-beamed and –paneled ceiling soaring 24 feet above the family room, and a hanging oval staircase that winds among the house’s four levels like a hand-carved ribbon of walnut.

The slate-roofed house is the design of the architect Charles Vincent George and the builder Jim McMahon, who have collaborated on other super-lavish homes in Hinsdale. This one, McMahon says, “is definitely the best we’ve done.” The house’s Country French character is pervasive, extending even to the outdoor fireplace, a monumental stone and stucco…

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On the Market—Pure Prairie in Hyde Park

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List price: $1.95 million
The Property: One hundred years old in 2008, this 14-room Prairie-style home has been thoroughly renovated and updated but at no cost to its original character, which comes from five-piece banded molding in the main rooms, a massive fireplace bricked in a herringbone pattern, and numerous windows on three sides (a rarity in Hyde Park’s older attached houses). The Tudor look of the beamed upper and brick lower portions carries through this and four other houses built on this corner in a Hyde Park “Professors’ Row” cluster. The architects of the cluster, Tallmadge & Watson, were among the leading Prairie architects—in fact…

Housing Bulletin—Transit Funding and the Real-Estate Market

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Last week, months of wrangling in the state legislature over how to fund the metro area’s rail and bus lines resulted in a deal that included an increase on the tax on real-estate transfers in Chicago. That increase¬—$3.50 per $1,000 in value of the property sold—will all go to mass transit, presuming the Chicago City Council approves the tax. (The current tax—$7.50 per $1,000—does not fund mass transit.)

The reasoning behind the measure was that Chicago was paying less than its share for transit because its sales-tax receipts weren’t up to what the collar counties collected. Since the owners of city property—not just housing, but retail and commercial real estate—clearly benefit from…

Sale of the Week—Chicago’s Old Norwood

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The Property: This 128-year-old house is in the heart of Old Norwood, a neighborhood on the city’s far Northwest Side. With its curving streets, charming older homes, relatively big city lots, a big park, and a nearby commuter train station, Old Norwood is “the best-kept secret ‘Mayberry’ in Chicago,” says Lisa Sanders, the Coldwell Banker agent who represented…

On the Market—Twin Moderns in Ukrainian Village

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List Price: $1,049,000 each
The Properties: These two sleek houses are the design of Studio Dwell Architects. Behind their almost-identical cedar and glass facades, they have spacious floor plans, sharp Arcilinea kitchens, and top-floor master bedrooms with exquisite views of two local landmarks: the gold dome of Sts. Vladimir and Olga Church and the multiple copper spires of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.

Each house has a big double-height front room that combines living and dining with an almost vertiginous view up two flights of stairs. Beyond are a kitchen and…

Housing Bulletin—Where is the Bottom?

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In the late 1990s, economists, real-estate analysts, and others were puzzled by the housing market. House prices kept going up, confounding everyone’s forecasts. Ten years later, we’re on the other side of that hill: Prices are going down, but nobody seems to know how far they will descend.

Since home prices are a moving target at the moment, up-to-date price data is hard to come by. But I have been hearing routinely that appraisers now use 2004 prices as their benchmarks; just a few months ago, they were using 2005 prices. A 2004 price would mean that after 13 years of increases, we’ve slipped back about three years. That means if you bought your home before 2004, you are still ahead of the game. But that’s only if the market doesn’t fall any farther—and most forecasts say…