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Ad Categories: Real Estate

Housing Bulletin— More Homeowners Using Short Sales as an Alternative to Foreclosure

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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…

Sale of the Week—Priced to Sell in Lincoln Park

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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…

On The Market—A Historic Home in Chicago’s Gap

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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

Housing Bulletin— Join the Auction Action

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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’…

Sale of the Week—Builder’s Loss, Buyer’s Gain in Burr Ridge

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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…

On The Market—Kenilworth’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles House

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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…

A Contemporary Lake Forest Farmhouse

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List Price: $1,599,000
Sale Price: $1,300,000
The Property: The architect Frederick Phillips designed this simple but striking house in 2000 for his widowed, 80-something mother, Katherine Bennett, who had lived nearby in a renovated 19th-century barn for four decades. “She only needed a few rooms,” says Phillips, “but she had always cherished her views of the woods around her.” Phillips designed a house that put all his mother’s needs—kitchen, living and dining room, bedroom, bathroom, and a big deck—on the second floor, with windows all around and elevator access from the…

On The Market—Hinsdale’s House of Treasures

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List Price: $6.3 million
The Property: Brian Baetz and his company, the Lemont-based Morgan Builders, have been putting up houses and entire subdivisions in the west and southwest suburbs for two decades. But this six-bedroom, 9,300-square-foot house, which was completed in November in Hinsdale, is Baetz’s pet project. Inspired by the centuries-old homes outside Paris, it is a repository of . . .

PLUS: a bonus video – walking tour with the builder

Housing Bulletin—Irene Pritzker Sells Her Kenilworth Mansion

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Irene Pritzker, the former wife of Robert Pritzker—who, with his brother Jay, turned a family fortune into a financial empire best known for its Hyatt hotels and resorts—has sold her 13-room Kenilworth mansion for $2,775,000. A handsome brick and limestone villa roofed in green terra cotta and situated on four-tenths of an acre, it has five bedrooms and a…