10/30/08

On the Market: People in Glass Houses—Northfield

List Price: $3.995 million
The Property: A contemporary architectural landmark, this all-glass house in Northfield—the 2002 design of and the current home of the architect Tom Roszak—won national recognition from the American Institute of Architects in 2007 and Architectural Digest in 2005. Roszak, an avowed modernist who has built ...

Posted at 09:02 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (2)

10/29/08

Housing Bulletin: Four New House-Hunting Aids

Despite the downturn in the housing market, there are still people shopping for homes these days. Here are four new or newly upgraded house-hunting tools to assist them.

• Prudential Preferred Properties provides subscribers with a weekly Preferred Market Watch Report with detailed stats on all properties listed for sale in a particular zip code. (You can sign up for the report here.) The reports include, among other things, the average...

Posted at 08:45 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (8)

10/27/08

Sale of the Week: Gadzooks! Teardown Planned for Hinsdale Tudor

List Price: $3,900,000
Sale Price: $3,575,000
The Property: This mammoth, lavishly detailed Tudor mansion, completed in 1932 in a section of Hinsdale known as the Woodlands, was sold in late September to only its fourth owner—who plans to demolish it and build a new home on the 2.2-acre lot. The Chicago architecture firm Armstrong, Furst and Tilton designed the 14-room house, which was built for the family that...

Posted at 08:15 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (5)

10/23/08

On the Market: Highland Park, AZ

List Price: $1,998,500
The Property: Walking between stacked-stone pillars into the coolness of an open-ceilinged entry court at this Highland Park house, you get the feeling you’ve left the North Shore and arrived in the arid Southwest. That’s all intentional: the house was designed in 1964 for a man whose wife, the story goes...

Posted at 07:18 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (6)

10/22/08

Housing Bulletin: Fighting Foreclosures

Recently, several government and philanthropic agencies have rolled out new programs to help the growing number of Chicago-area homeowners facing foreclosure. Last week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced that it will provide $68 million in grants and low-interest loans to help people on the edge of foreclosure. And in mid-September...

Posted at 10:29 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/20/08

Sale of the Week: Going Geothermal in Wilmette

List Price: $1,395,000
Sale Price: $1,327,500
The Property: On a street of mostly traditional-looking homes in Wilmette, this residence fits right in with its red brick exterior trimmed in white. But the house is a departure for its neighborhood—and for almost any other community in the Chicago area—because it has...

Posted at 07:30 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/16/08

On the Market: A Vacancy at Aurora’s O’Dell Hotel

List Price: $619,900
The Property: Last week, Spike O’Dell, the morning host at WGN-Radio for the last eight years, confirmed on the air that he will leave the station in December when his contract expires. With their kids grown and “everything we wanted to do done,” O’Dell told me, he and his wife, Karen, plan to retire to...

Posted at 05:43 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (5)

10/15/08

Housing Bulletin: One Homebuilder’s Very Candid Look Back

Last week, a local builder, Paul Ahlrich of Grun Development, sat down with me for a frank talk about his experience building and selling new houses in Chicago. Ahlrich got into the business slowly at first, and then in early 2006, took a headlong plunge, building three new upscale houses in Humboldt Park—houses he expected to sell before or shortly after...

Posted at 07:11 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (3)

10/13/08

Sale of the Week: A Teardown—or Not—in Barrington Hills

List Price: $1.9 million
Sale Price: $1.4 million
The Property: This 50-year-old Greek Revival-style home may be demolished soon by its new owners—but then again, it may not. After all, it sat for two and a half years awaiting a similar fate from its last last...

Posted at 08:13 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/09/08

On The Market—Doubly Contemporary in Wicker Park

List Price: $1.25 million
The Property: This newly built house is up-to-the-minute in two ways: its sleek, airy design is very contemporary, and many of the materials and methods that went into its construction are sustainable...

Posted at 11:24 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

10/08/08

Housing Bulletin—Company Announces Discounted Home Sales

In the present economic climate, home sellers have been tense, while potential homebuyers have had a tendency to sit still. But for ten days, beginning on October 10th, one real-estate company will try to get house sales moving again by cutting the asking price on thousands of homes by 10 percent.

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage has arranged for the owners of about 23,000 homes nationwide—about 1,300 of them in...

Posted at 07:36 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/06/08

Sale of the Week—A Lincoln Park Greystone

List Price: $1.495 million
Sale Price: $1.3 million
The Property: This Victorian greystone was built in 1874 on what is now one of Lincoln Park’s most appealing blocks, with the park half a block east, restaurants less than a block to the west, and some of the neighborhood’s finest architectural treasures (including the Wrigley...

Posted at 11:20 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

10/02/08

On The Market—Dramatic Contemporary in Humboldt Park

List Price: $1.295 million
The Property: Clad in brick, zinc, and cedar, this is one of two sharply contemporary houses on a Humboldt Park street sprinkled with new, more traditional construction—and even its partner can’t quite match the profile of this home, with that cedar box projecting from the second floor...

Posted at 11:23 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

10/01/08

Housing Bulletin—The Hardest Hit

As evidenced by Chicago’s annual real-estate chart—which appears in the October 2008 issue and spans the 12-month period from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008—home values are down almost everywhere in the metro region. (And according to a Case-Schiller report that came...

Posted at 08:41 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)