05/08/08

On The Market—Throwing Bucktown a Curve

List Price: $1.9 million
The Property: The architect John Hanna threw the rigidly rectilinear street grid in Bucktown a curve when he designed this contemporary home for a corner lot. The house appears impossibly slender when viewed from the west (looking at its front door), but then broadens in a sweeping, glassy curve as you walk around its north side.
Inside, the floor plan doesn’t feel pinched at the narrow ends because Hanna and the property’s developer, Chris Angelou, tucked balconies, closets, and bathrooms into those spaces. Stacked from the basement to the top floor within the house’s big bend are a...

Posted at 08:01 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

05/07/08

Housing Bulletin— Neighborhood Info @ Your Service

Two weeks ago, the Chicago real-estate agency @properties rolled out a cool tool for house hunters and sellers on its Web site. The @Report, as they call it, is built on the idea that real-estate markets are very, very local.

The eight-year-old agency has offices or agents working in 21 Chicago neighborhoods (most of the lakefront from Rogers Park to South Shore, plus a layer or two of inland neighborhoods for much of that stretch); this new tool puts the details on...

Posted at 06:48 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/05/08

Sale of the Week—Breaking the Mold in Glen Ellyn

List price: $600,000
Sale Price: $545,000
The Property: When a homeowner owes more than a house is worth, that’s called being “under water.” In the case of this house, the term took on a double meaning.

The sellers of this house had bought the place in July 2006 for $800,000. The next year they moved to New York before they were able to sell the home, says their agent, RE/Max’s Christopher Kouros. Eventually the sellers, whose names do not appear in public records, dropped their asking price to...

Posted at 07:27 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/01/08

On The Market—A Tudor Manor in Highland Park

List Price: $2.9 million
The Property: This grand old home 75 yards from the Lake Michigan blufftop in Highland Park evokes the early 20th-century age of big North Shore country houses. With its peacock fan of gable beams above a cozy inglenook entry, it would have been a happy place to arrive after a long...

Posted at 11:22 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/30/08

Housing Bulletin— City Condos Provide a Little Good News—for Now

Numbers out last week from the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) showed a big drop-off in home sales for Illinois in March from the same month in 2007. But Chicago stood out in two ways. The number of sales here dropped by a far smaller percentage than in the rest of the state. What’s more, the median sale price was up in Chicago, although it was down in...

Posted at 08:57 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

04/28/08

Sale of the Week—Renter Buys His Mag Mile Penthouse

List Price: $3.6 million
Sale Price: $3.6 million
The Property: A large 54th-floor penthouse in the 55 East Erie tower changed owners last week, but no movers were involved. Sanjay Khosla, an executive vice president of Kraft Foods and president of the company’s Kraft International unit, had been renting the 4,500-square-foot, three-bedroom condo from Michael Giambrone; on April 23rd, Khosla bought...

Posted at 10:10 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/24/08

On the Market—Lake View's Painting Lady

List Price: $1,850,000
The Property: The colorist behind this "painted lady"—a 120-year-old Queen Anne with 14 different hues of paint accentuating its intricately detailed exterior—is Tracy Hurst, Lake View's painting lady. Hurst, who has lived in the house since 1987 with her husband, Taylor, and their kids, painted the entire exterior herself over three summers in the late 1990s. She did a terrific job, bringing out the...

Posted at 08:53 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/23/08

Housing Bulletin—How Low Can You Go?

The builders who completed a new 4,000-square-foot house on Pine Street in Winnetka last year had hopes of selling it for around $3.2 million. But the real-estate market fell progressively downward, until eventually the builders had no idea what the house was worth anymore. In March, they found out: It sold for $1,926,000, or 39 percent less than they had hoped.

The real-estate auction house Sheldon Good & Co. sold the property for the builders in an unusual way...

Posted at 08:15 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/21/08

Sale of the Week—Down on Armour’s Lake Forest Farm

List Price: $2,099,000
Sale Price: $1,975,000
The Property: It’s only four years old, but with its low arches, brick corner quoining, and hefty, detailed chimney, this ten-room home in Lake Forest looks as if it might have been plucked out of the English countryside a century ago. That’s what makes it so well suited to its surroundings, a hilltop neighborhood of about 50 gentry homes that overlook one of the prettiest pieces of countryside...

Posted at 07:59 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/17/08

On The Market—Rapper’s Short-Lived Crib in Homer Glen

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...

Posted at 09:15 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)