List Price: $350,000List Price: $350,000List Price: $350,000
List Price: $350,000
The Property: For about five months in 2006, this 11-room house on a cul-de-sac in southwest suburban Homer Glen was home to an aspiring rapper who went by the name Blaxican. The embellishments included gargoyles and security cameras across the front of the roof, a shark tank in the dining room, a recording studio and two baby alligators in the…
In January 2003, a modest three-bedroom red brick bungalow in Jefferson Park sold for $269,000. Last Thursday, at a foreclosure auction in a suburban hotel ballroom, that same Northwest Side bungalow sold for $209,625 (which included an auction fee of $14,625). Although he declined to provide his name, the buyer was positively jubilant. “I know it’s worth…
Plus: Video from the auction
List Price: $1,124,000
Sale Price: $1,051,282
The Property: After years of working separately on rehabbing vintage buildings, two Lake View builders, Bryan Hansen and Sharon Pratt, have come to “believe in details,” says Hansen. In their first collaboration on a new house, they indulged that belief, creating a warm, distinctive house that sold relatively quickly in…
List Price: $1,390,000
The Property: When Kevin Fitzpatrick bought this 12-room hilltop house in St. Charles two years ago, the entire thing was white, inside and out. “It was right out of Raging Bull,” he says…
Plus: A video walk-through with Dennis
Hoping to avoid foreclosure, some financially strapped homeowners are taking advantage of what until recently had been a little-used option. When they find they can no longer afford their homes, they negotiate with their lender to accept a short sale—a transaction where a bank or other lender allows the house to be sold for less than the amount owed on it.
According to the records of Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED, which until recently was known as the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois), at least one of every ten houses that sold in the Chicago…
List Price: $2,599,500
Sale Price: $2,375,000
The Property: Almost two years old but never occupied, this ten-room house would seem to have everything going for it, starting with location. It is only half a block from lovely Oz Park, and unlike most of the traffic-clogged Lincoln Park neighborhood, the one-way, block-long street it sits on offers some degree of privacy. As for the house itself, it is…
List Price: $1,075,000
The Property: Built in 1888 when the mid–South Side was very fashionable, this greystone townhouse was dilapidated and fronted by chain-link fencing in May 2002. That’s when Tim and Lynne Rinkoski, moving from Downers Grove into the city, decided to make it their next restoration project. “It was the best-looking deserted house on…
Plus: a video walk-through with Dennis
As more homeowners and builders fall into foreclosure, many of the properties they let go of wind up on the auction block, where house hunters willing to do some advance legwork can land some terrific bargains. “It’s not the house’s fault or the condo’s fault that it’s being auctioned,” says Rick Levin, the head of the Chicago real-estate auction firm Rick Levin & Associates. “It’s typically the owners’…
List Price: $1,199,000
Sale Price: $1,300,000
The Property: The buyer of this 15-room house in Burr Ridge got a real bargain, even though the house, left unfinished by the builder who lost it to foreclosure, lacks a few essentials. For instance, it still needs shower doors and a door between the garage and the house, and the builder removed the kitchen appliances and some light fixtures prior to giving title to the bank. And while…
List Price: $2,773,000
The Property: The quintessential center-entry Colonial, this Kenilworth house stood in as the warm family home Steve Martin’s weary, irritable character desperately wanted to reach in time for Thanksgiving dinner in the 1987 movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles. “If I had a big life-sized photo of Steve Martin, I would put it in the window every Thanksgiving,” says Jeanie Schneider, who bought the house in 1996 with her husband, Wes. “Every Halloween, children come to the door and ask…
