List Price: $1.495 million Sale Price: $1.235 million The Property: All but invisible from the street, this mid-century modern house—designed by the architect Ed Dart to hug the rim of a Lake Forest ravine—was the home of Charles Walgreen from 2005 until late last month. The 12-room house is made of cedar, brick, steel and … Read more
List Price: $1.550 million (house on left/south) $ 1.500 million (house on right/north)
The Property: This pair of new houses has many sustainable features: solar panels, recycled roofing, paints and carpeting that emit little or no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They even feature permeable paving in the front sidewalks so that storm water can…
The house in Homer Glen that the state of Illinois seized from the rapper and convicted con artist Eric “Blaxican” Jaglicic sold on May 30th for $380,000—which is $30,000 more than the asking price. As readers may recall from my April 17th blog (which includes a video tour), this is the house with a shark tank in the dining room, an alligator pen in the basement, and a liberal use of…
List Price: $979,000
Sold Price: $949,000
The Property: This Riverwoods house sold on May 5th for 9.6 percent less than the sellers had paid for it just 14 months earlier. The sellers—Janice Ferri Esser, a writer for TV soap operas, and her husband, Robert Esser—were not able to sell their prior home, according to the listing sheet for this property, so they…
List Price: $799,000
The Property: While Jersey Avenue on Chicago’s Northwest Side is fairly noisy with traffic, this house and its five same-style neighbors create a wall that hides the quiet, leafy treasure that lies behind them: a long stretch of…
Before Neumann Homes went into bankruptcy last November, it was the ninth-largest builder in the Chicago area, with subdivisions going up in a string of towns along the outer edge of the suburbs. The company’s tumble, which its CEO, Ken Neumann, acknowledged was due to over-exuberant expansion, sent yet another shockwave through…
List Price: $587,500
The Property: Today, everybody loves Bertrand. But in 1957, before the iconic corncob towers of Marina City made Bertrand Goldberg a beloved Chicago architect, he had to revamp his plans for this house in Flossmoor twice because village officials didn’t like his…
The latest report from Appraisal Research Counselors (ARC), whose finger is always on the pulse of Chicago’s downtown condominium market, indicates that even if the shine is gone from condos as investment vehicles, the overwhelming majority of people who bought a few years ago in buildings now being finished are sticking with their contracts.
Why is that news? Well, a spike in the number of buyers opting to back out of their deals—leaving their upfront cash deposits in the hands of…
New homes just “part of the neighborhood”
Noiseproofing, high-end appliances, and other amenities enhance condos
