For decades, the Henry B. Clarke House on South Indiana Avenue enjoyed the uncontested honor of being called the city’s oldest home. But over the past few years, a contender for that title has quietly emerged: the Noble-Seymour-Crippen House in Norwood Park.
List Price: $1,395,000
Sale Price: $1,307,500
The Property: In the shadow of the John Hancock Center, this 1916 edifice by William Fugard, who also designed the Allerton Hotel and some of the buildings on East Lake Shore Drive, has a ground-level backyard, a rarity in the neighborhood. While most of the units in the seven-story brick and limestone building have three bedrooms, this one was reconfigured to have only two: a master bedroom and a guest suite, which is “completely isolated from…
List Price: $2.29 million
The Property: This ten-room brick house was the home of Mike Ditka and his wife, Diana, from 1989 until he left Chicago to coach the New Orleans Saints in 1997. The Ditkas had bought the house—one of about a dozen on a forested cul-de-sac—new from the builder for $1.2 million. Set on more than two densely wooded acres and surrounded by a high brick wall, the 3,500-square-foot house has four bedrooms, four-plus baths, four fireplaces, and a swimming pool. The basement has a wine room, an exercise room, and…
Housing Bulletin: Riding the Foreclosure Bus
It’s only a matter of time until some enterprising Chicagoan emulates the Stockton, California, real-estate agent who dreamed up this idea: a bus tour that takes potential buyers all over town to view the foreclosed houses for sale. It’s a long tour.
And if the real-estate forecasts play out as prognosticated by some—that is, if hundreds of thousands of over-extended U.S. homeowners have to bail out of their houses in the next 18 months as their once-cheap Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARM) reset at dramatically higher prices—that Stockton bus tour might become a national franchise.
Nationwide, foreclosures are spreading like a bad rash. On November 1st, the California-based Realty Trac reported that…
Dennis Rodkin appears regularly on WGN’s Spike O’Dell Radio Program sometimes discussing properties not mentioned in the Deal Estate blog. Check back here each week to find links and information for those listings.
From the November 7th show – Foreclosures
These representative listings were all found at foreclosure.com.
Estimated values are from zillow.com; they should not substitute for a…
List price: $3,999,900
Sale Price: $3,550,000
The Property: This two-year-old, 16-room mansion with French styling sits on a secluded site within the already secluded Indian Hill Club, a 90-year-old residential enclave that winds around a golf course in Winnetka. With stone quoining on the exterior corners and a mansard roof, as well as five fireplaces (four of them made of hand-carved stone), a curving staircase, and a cherry-paneled library, this relative newcomer fits in congenially with the refined older houses in this rarefied community of about…
List Price: $6.575 million
The Property: Pointedly opaque to passersby, this three-story, 6,300-square-foot house opens up inside as a series of light-bathed rooms whose walls and ceilings, staircases and cabinetry appear to float past and through one another. Designed by the architect Perry Janke and completed in 1992, the house has at its center a 43-foot-high atrium, with steel staircases climbing its sides, assorted rooms overlooking it through glass or through wall cutouts, and a roof terrace at the top. Hung throughout is the sellers’ collection of art, including a sculpture of a woman walking a tightrope 30 feet above the living room.
The house’s exterior windows use a commercial-grade glass that from the outside appears to be covered with a dense screen but is transparent from the inside. “We wanted to see [Lincoln Park] without having the park see us…
Yesterday afternoon, the day before Halloween, several real-estate agents and their children went on a special trick-or-treating route on the 4100 block of North Bell Avenue in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood. Stopping at five of the six houses that are for sale on the block, the kids picked up treats—but what their parents saw was pretty scary.
On this block alone, there are four new replacement houses in the $1.2-million to $1.4-million price range, all finished (or nearly finished) and unsold. Also listed for sale are…
Dennis Rodkin appears regularly on WGN’s Spike O’Dell Radio Program sometimes discussing properties not mentioned in the Deal Estate blog. Check back here each week to find links and information for those listings.
From the 10/10/07 show – Elmhurst Homes…
List Price: $1,149,000
Sale Price: $1,113,000
The Property: This shingle-sided house on a tree-shaded street has sold twice this year, and very quickly, flouting the slow market that has irked so many sellers. Built five years ago by the prolific Nick Lazzaretto, the house is far larger than it looks, extending way back into its lot; that allowed the façade to fit comfortably among the neighboring, mostly mid-size older homes. The house has five bedrooms and four-plus baths, a big third-floor family room, and lots of old-style millwork, including wainscoting, mantels, and cabinetry…
