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Tag: Housing Bulletin
Lincoln Park’s Two Battlefields
By Dennis Rodkin
In recent months, two groups of Lincoln Park residents have been fighting proposals that they believe will have a negative impact on their neighborhood—and the two battlegrounds are just three blocks apart on Webster Avenue. “There’s a lot going on over there on Webster these days,” says Alderman Vi Daley (43rd)... Read more
Che “Rhymefest” Smith’s Green Hopes for the 20th Ward
By Dennis Rodkin
In the last few hours before the blizzard hit last Tuesday, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, the Grammy-winning rapper who is now running for alderman in Chicago’s 20th Ward, drove me around his neighborhood. The ward has over 30,000 vacant lots (most of them city-owned) and hundreds or perhaps thousands of foreclosed homes (there is no accurate count available), many of them boarded up... Read more
Realtors’ 2011 Forecast: “Ho-Hum”
By Dennis Rodkin
On Tuesday, the latest data from the Case Shiller Index showed that among the country’s 20 largest cities, Chicago-area home values for November 2010 took the second-largest fall from the year before. Prices were down 7.6 percent from November 2009; only Atlanta, at 7.9 percent, fell further... Read more
Marketing a Vintage House
By Dennis Rodkin
Sellers of vintage homes may be at a greater disadvantage now than during a healthy real-estate market. Homebuyers today are getting such great deals on new or recent construction—sometimes at rock-bottom foreclosure prices—that they don’t have to bother with taking on a house that needs some updating just to get a better price... Read more
Winnetka’s Row of Woe
By Dennis Rodkin
The December 21st sale of a bank-owned 18-room home in Winnetka for $2.375 million wrapped up the four-year saga of a row of four newly built mansions that all went at big discounts. If sold at their original asking prices, the four would have gone for a combined total of $18.49 million; instead, they were sold for 43 percent of that: $8.025 million... Read more
How to Buy a Foreclosure, Part 2: A Specialized Retirement Account
By Dennis Rodkin
If your own housing is secure—knock on wood—you may have been watching all these bargain-priced foreclosures from the sidelines, thinking that because you’re not in the market for a new home, you couldn’t take advantage of an appealing investment opportunity. What you may not have known is that there’s a type of IRA that lets you use your retirement funds to buy, rehab, and rent investment property, including foreclosures... Read more
How to Buy a Foreclosure: A Rehab Loan
By Dennis Rodkin
With foreclosures still proliferating in and around Chicago, sharp buyers can spot some great bargains. If the property is damaged, though, most mortgage lenders won’t finance the purchase. That’s why some buyers are now turning to a specialized loan called a 203K, based on the future value of the house, post-repairs... Read more