List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When the picturesque but obsolete Fort Sheridan military base on the Lake Michigan bluffs between Highland Park and Lake Forest was being converted to a residential neighborhood in the late 1990s, a key member of the redevelopment team, Richard Stein, called dibs on what must have seemed at the time like a questionable parcel. While some of his teammates snapped up handsome blufftop homes that had housed the base’s top officers, Stein took a long, squat building a few blocks from the lakefront...

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List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When the picturesque but obsolete Fort Sheridan military base on the Lake Michigan bluffs between Highland Park and Lake Forest was being converted to a residential neighborhood in the late 1990s, a key member of the redevelopment team, Richard Stein, called dibs on what must have seemed at the time like a questionable parcel. While some of his teammates snapped up handsome blufftop homes that had housed the base’s top officers, Stein took a long, squat building a few blocks from the lakefront...

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List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When the picturesque but obsolete Fort Sheridan military base on the Lake Michigan bluffs between Highland Park and Lake Forest was being converted to a residential neighborhood in the late 1990s, a key member of the redevelopment team, Richard Stein, called dibs on what must have seemed at the time like a questionable parcel. While some of his teammates snapped up handsome blufftop homes that had housed the base’s top officers, Stein took a long, squat building a few blocks from the lakefront...

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On the Market—Garden Splendor in Fort Sheridan

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List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When the picturesque but obsolete Fort Sheridan military base on the Lake Michigan bluffs between Highland Park and Lake Forest was being converted to a residential neighborhood in the late 1990s, a key member of the redevelopment team, Richard Stein, called dibs on what must have seemed at the time like a questionable parcel. While some of his teammates snapped up handsome blufftop homes that had housed the base’s top officers, Stein took a long, squat building a few blocks from the lakefront…

Housing Bulletin—Who Benefits from Another Fed Rate Cut

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The Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut its rate again later today, but that doesn’t mean you should call your mortgage broker this afternoon in search of a lower payment. You should have called yesterday.

There is a widespread misconception that mortgage rates are directly connected to the Fed’s funds rate. In fact, the relationship is more along the lines of “Me and My Shadow”: the two tend to move approximately in step with one another, but neither one orders the other around.

“Mortgage bond markets meet every day, much more often than the Fed,” says Dan Green, a mortgage planner and loan officer at Mobium Mortgage here in Chicago and the author of themortgagereports.com. “Most of what the Fed is responding to has already been…

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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