11/29/07

On the Market—Wilmette

List Price: $1.695 million
The Property: From its triangular floor plan to its hanging chimney, internal balconies, and master bathroom tiled in black polka dots, this Wilmette house built in 1981 is a study in unconventional design. The work of the late Marion Gutnayer—a University of Illinois architecture professor whose own even more unusual home is just a block away—this four-bedroom house has a big eight-sided living room whose brick walls shut out the sight and sound of the busy street outside, while its tall, slender windows frame views of trees and garden space. Upstairs loft spaces near two children’s bedrooms overlook the living room, and they are matched in the rear of the house by a broad balcony off the master bedroom that looks out over the glass-walled family room and into the yard. There is also a wide spiral staircase, vertical cutouts in some brick walls, a large-panel terrazzo floor, and...

Posted at 09:40 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

11/28/07

Housing Bulletin—Dimon in the Rough

November 28, 2007
Housing Bulletin: Dimon in the Rough
Jamie Dimon, the banking executive who now heads New York–based JP Morgan Chase, has cut 11 percent off the asking price of the 26-room Gold Coast mansion where he lived while he ran Bank One. Originally listed at $13.5 million, the house now has a price tag of $12 million.

The broad house, faced with rough-hewn orange limestone, was built by Potter Palmer in 1889 as part of his effort to make the nascent Gold Coast into the fashionable new neighborhood. The architect Ernest Graham, of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White (think Wrigley Building and Field Museum), did a later expansion and remodeling. The house’s exterior is a many-textured composition of hefty stones, arched windows, copper-topped turrets, and dormers puncturing a...

Posted at 07:06 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

11/26/07

Sale of the Week—Winnetka Charmer

List Price: $2,394,500
Sale Price: $2,190,000

The Property: A handsome new home whose rough limestone exterior and creamy shingles fit comfortably among the vintage homes in a tucked-away corner of Winnetka, this house has 11 rooms (five of them bedrooms), four-plus baths, a ten-foot-long kitchen island, and three fireplaces. The builder, Tamara Kasey, bought the lot, which then contained a smaller house, in 2000 for $549,000. With this replacement house, she took advantage of the extra-deep corner lot, giving the residence an elongated layout that strings together living and dining rooms and an open kitchen–family room combo. Out back, beyond French doors, sits a bluestone terrace and a cottage-look...

Posted at 11:05 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/21/07

Housing Bulletin—Nobody Is Rushing to Gobble Up These Turkeys

By now, just about everybody with a home listed for sale understands that properties are taking longer to sell. Still, some houses sit on the market for what seems like an eternity. Sometimes a house is so unusual that it simply has to wait for the right buyer to come along. But others suffer from significant flaws: they are outrageously ostentatious; their builders stubbornly cling to the original asking price; they are in unlikely settings for a high-priced house. These are the turkeys of the real-estate market, and in honor of Thanksgiving, I have rounded up...

Posted at 06:17 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/19/07

Sale of the Week—Oak Brook

List Price: $949,000
Sale Price: $830,600

The Property: Built in 1968, this 12-room brick French-styled home on a one-acre lot left the hands of its original owners for the first time in November. Set on a hilltop cul-de-sac in an Oak Brook neighborhood of mostly bolder architectural homes—some outrageously so—this relatively reserved home has five bedrooms, hardwood floors in most rooms, and a big lawn. The kitchen and five baths (three full, two partial) are all original and need

Posted at 05:04 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/15/07

On the Market—Atop the Loop

List Price: $829,900

The Property: This two-story penthouse condo at the top of the 101-year-old Mentor Building (at 39 South State Street) has three bedrooms plus an office, a stylish kitchen, and striking views of the surrounding architecture. Windows in the condo’s lower floor look out between some of the columns that give the building’s upper reaches the look of a temple-in-the-sky. (The condo’s upper level, where the three bedrooms and two full baths are, is on a floor concealed from street-level view.) Views stretch north all the way to the new Trump building; what’s more, those views can never be blocked because...

Posted at 06:06 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/14/07

This Week on Spike—November 14 - price cuts

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 14th show - Price cuts in the Chicago region:

Posted at 08:48 AM in This Week on Spike | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/14/07

Housing Bulletin—Assessing Mr. Toll’s F

While releasing some downward-sliding sales figures last week, Robert Toll—the CEO of Toll Brothers, a national home-building company—gave an informal letter grade to each of several regional markets where it operates. Chicago got an F.

That’s not to say that the housing market here has tanked more than in other parts of the country. In fact, as I read it, that low grade suggests that buyers here might be more cautious or judicious than elsewhere. The F is Toll’s assessment of how each market is doing vis-à-vis his company’s sales performance. He reported 38.9 percent of people with contracts to...

Posted at 08:37 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/12/07

Sale of the Week—Georgian Grandeur on the Gold Coast

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...

Posted at 09:00 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/08/07

On the Market—Mike Ditka’s Former Bannockburn Home

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...

Posted at 08:24 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/07/07

Housing Bulletin—Riding the Foreclosure Bus

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...

Posted at 08:47 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (4)

11/07/07

This Week on Spike—November 7

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...

Posted at 08:41 AM in This Week on Spike | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/05/07

Sale of the Week—Après le Déluge — Winnetka

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...

Posted at 07:11 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

11/01/07

New on the Market—A Steel and Glass Landmark on Chicago’s Lincoln Park

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...

Posted at 07:19 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)