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Dennis Rodkin
Housing Bulletin—Who Owns Your Home?
By Dennis Rodkin

There is a timeworn joke about home ownership that has gained new relevance over the past few months. It’s one you’ve likely heard before, and maybe even made yourself. Making light of the fact that we claim to “own” our homes—when in fact, for many homeowners with mortgages, the bank technically owns the lion’s share—we say something along the lines of, “We own one bedroom and a piece of...

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Sale of the Week—At a Loss in Northbrook
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $1.85 million
Sale Price: $1.65 million
The Property: Built in 1940, when Northbrook was a sleepy little village, this genteel 12-room house evokes that simpler era with its stone gateposts and tall trees, its large screened sunroom, its swimming pool and broad lawn. But thanks to a successful kitchen...

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Housing Bulletin—What Sells Now—and How
By Dennis Rodkin

Nobody was especially surprised when the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) announced last week that home prices had dropped in January 2008 when compared to prices in January 2007. The drop—2.2 percent in the Chicago area and 5.3 percent for the state of Illinois—was the first year-to-year price drop since at least 1998, when the IAR started tracking that statistic. There was one bright spot...

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Sale of the Week—Rumsfeld’s Former Gold Coast Home
By Dennis Rodkin

List Price: $1.8 million
Sale Price: $1.75 million
The Property: The ten-room Gold Coast condominium where Donald Rumsfeld lived for 15 years before moving to Washington, D.C., to become Secretary of Defense in 2001 has been resold by the family who bought the place from Rumsfeld and his wife, Joyce. Set on the south end of the third and fourth floors of a handsome early 20th-century brick and limestone building that has just a ...

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Housing Bulletin: An Upgraded Web Site for City and Suburban House Hunters
By Dennis Rodkin

Thanks to some cool upgrades that launched last week, Dreamtown.com is now my pick for the most useful and informative Web site in Chicago for shopping for real estate.

Like countless other real-estate sites, Dreamtown provides access to all the properties listed for sale on the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI); offers tips on how to buy and sell in today's market; and purports to provide tips on how to do a "sale by owner"—while actually making the not-very-subtle pitch that you would much rather go through an agent.

But Dreamtown sets itself apart with...

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Sale of the Week—First Resale at Trump’s Tower
By Dennis Rodkin

List Price: $1,025,000
Sale Price: $890,000
The Property: Less than a month after the hotel floors opened at Trump International Hotel & Tower, a 21st-floor hotel-condo unit has become the first residence in the 92-story building (which is still under construction) to be resold by...

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