09/27/07

New on the Market—Roomy Contemporary in Chicago’s Bucktown Neighborhood

List Price: $2.499 million
The Property: This spacious, newly completed four-story home is one of a planned string of five houses and an eight-unit condo building going up on the 1600 block of North Wolcott Street in Bucktown. The first one finished, this house is a joint project of JODI Development and Ranquist Development. The latter, run by the husband-and-wife team of Bob and Karen Ranquist, has been responsible for some of the finest contemporary architecture in this architecturally savvy...

Posted at 06:33 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/27/07

This Week with Spike—Links from the program

Dennis Rodkin appears regularly on WGN's Spike O'Dell Radio Program to discuss properties not mentioned in the Deal Estate blog. Check back here each week to find links to those listings.

From the 9/26/07 show:

River North ($299,900)
Near West Side/UIC area ($295,000)
Flossmoor ($299,000)
Forest Park...

Posted at 06:30 AM in This Week on Spike | Permalink | Comments (2)

09/26/07

Housing Bulletin—Correction of Lincoln Square Data

It turns out housing prices in the Lincoln Square neighborhood (on Chicago’s Northwest Side) haven’t been on the two-year roller coaster ride suggested by Chicago’s October issue. Because of a problem with our data, the magazine’s annual real-estate charts reported an artificially large jump in prices in Lincoln Square in October 2006; as a result, the October 2007 charts indicated a dramatic (and false) decline...

Posted at 07:47 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/24/07

Sale of the Week—Hinsdale

List Price: $2.95 million
Sold Price: $2.325 million

The Property: Built in 1996, this 11-room house in Hinsdale has a contemporary grand foyer and stairs, a media room with its own ticket booth, and a backyard lap pool and waterfall. The house first went on the market a year ago, with an asking price of $3.249 million; the sellers, whose names are not in...

Posted at 08:50 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/20/07

New on the Market—Going to the Chapel in LaGrange

List Price: $1.299 million
The Property: This prim Swedish Evangelical church, built in 1900, was redone in the past two years as a serene, spa-like three-bedroom house, complete with a master bath hanging inside the steeple and a front hallway of ancient stone salvaged from Jerusalem. The house now has a sharp contemporary kitchen whose bright blue cabinets and backsplash of...

Posted at 07:04 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/19/07

Housing Bulletin—The Biggest Drops

This is the third installment of our close analysis of the real-estate charts that appeared in Chicago’s October issue. This week we are looking at the neighborhoods and towns where price drops were the biggest in the 12-month period covered by our charts—July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007. Over that time, as reported in the magazine, sale prices on homes fell in almost one-third of the chart’s 77 city neighborhoods and 204 suburbs. Factor in the places where increases were nearly flat (less than two percent) and that means more than half the region experienced moribund or declining real-estate prices.

As in the last two Housing Bulletins—which examined the neighborhoods and towns with the biggest drops in sales volume and the biggest increases in sales...

Posted at 07:59 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

09/17/07

Sale of the Week—River Forest Tudor

List Price: $2.5 million
Sale Price: $2.5 million

The Property: This 80-year-old Tudor set a sales-price record for River Forest when it was sold on September 10th. The closing came 16 months after the agreement to sell, an unusually long time span. Typically, most deals close after 30 days or so.

Here’s what happened. Back in May 2006, the sellers, Henry and Carolyn...

Posted at 07:42 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (2)

09/13/07

New on the Market—Old Irving Park, Chicago

List price: $1.499 million

The Property: Built in 1873 by one of the first residents of what was then suburban Irving Park, this brick Italianate house is filled with hand-crafted vintage features, including the door and window trim and the intricate wooden floor inlays. Otherwise, the place has the feel of a brand-new house, thanks to the restoration efforts of the past two owners, who took care to preserve the home’s original character while making it livable for the 21st century...

Posted at 07:14 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/12/07

Housing Bulletin—Turning Down the Volume

Deal Estate continues its expanded analysis of the real-estate charts in Chicago’s October issue, this week looking at the Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs where the number of home sales dropped most sharply.

Using data supplied by the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois, the charts in the magazine examined 77 city neighborhoods and 204 suburbs during the 12-month period beginning July 1, 2006, and ending June 30, 2007. In nine out of ten of those areas, fewer homes sold during that time period than in the preceding 12 months.

In most of the areas on this year’s charts, sales volume fell between 15 and 35 percent. Hardest hit in the city was the sale of detached housing (single-family homes) in Hyde Park and Chicago Lawn; in the suburbs, Wayne,...

Posted at 06:28 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/10/07

Sale of the Week—Pritzkers Sell Their Evanston Mansion

Deal of the Week: Pritzkers Sell Their Evanston Mansion
List Price: $4.5 million
Sale Price:  $4.1 million

The Property: Now that they have moved into their $30,000-a-month rental on the...

Posted at 06:44 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/06/07

New on the Market—A Riverside Webmaster

List Price: $910,000

The Property: The last work of the innovative west suburban architect Harold Zook, this Riverside house, built in 1948, has had only one owner. That means many of its original features are intact—including the spider-web pattern crafted in glass (in a window) and in stone (above the mantel), as well as the kooky clown faces inlaid into the basement’s linoleum...

Posted at 05:11 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/05/07

Housing Bulletin—Hitting the Brakes

In its October 2007 issue, Chicago charts home sales in 77 city neighborhoods and 204 suburbs over a 12-month period beginning July 1, 2006, and ending June 30, 2007. Among other things, the charts, using data provided by the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois, reveal a widespread increase in the time it took to sell a home: in nearly 90 percent of the neighborhoods and suburbs, it took longer this year to sell a house or condo than it did the year before.

The charts in the magazine show only a neighborhood or suburb’s average sales time; they do not include year-to-year comparisons. But Deal Estate did calculate those changes—and they aren’t pretty. (We are analyzing market time this week; the Wednesday Housing Bulletins over the next few weeks will...

Posted at 05:09 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (0)

09/03/07

Sale of the Week—Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Lake Forest House

List Price: $2.495 million
Sale Price: $2.175 million

The Property: Frank Lloyd Wright’s only project in Lake Forest, this 12-room house, built at the edge of a ravine in the early 1950s, demonstrates the architect’s ability to shape people’s perceptions of the spaces that surround them. Visitors to the house...

Posted at 07:16 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)