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Tag: Housing Bulletin
Scott Turow’s Glencoe House Under Contract
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $5.9 million
Sale Price: Not yet known

The novelist Scott Turow’s Glencoe lakefront home, which has been on the market for $5.9 million, is under contract with a buyer, Turow’s real estate agent confirmed for Deal Estate on Wednesday. Read more
Renting Unsold Condos
By Dennis Rodkin
At the height of the condo boom, many investors snapped up under-construction condos, planning to turn around and sell them upon or shortly after completion. In the crash years, reselling has proved difficult, leaving some investors bleeding money as their condos sit unsold. Justin Elliott, the founder and CEO of Chicago Apartment Finders (which leases about 6,000 apartments each year), suggests that investors consider renting those condo until the market becomes more stable... Read more
Antonio Davis Sells in Burr Ridge
By Dennis Rodkin
Yesterday, Antonio Davis, who spent two seasons with the Chicago Bulls, closed on the sale of his Burr Ridge home for $2.75 million. That’s $1 million less than the $3.75 million he had been asking for the 13-room house at the beginning of the year. It was the second house Davis had sold in the Chicago area in the past few months... Read more
Upgrades at Two Home Search Sites
By Dennis Rodkin
Over the past week, two Chicago real-estate companies beefed up their online presence. On October 30th, @Properties went live with its upgraded site, and Dream Town Realty followed suit on November 3rd. Last week, both companies gave me a prelaunch look at their new sites, and I was impressed... Read more
The Housing Decline’s Green Lining
By Dennis Rodkin
Among the many losses resulting from the recent real-estate downturn, John Wasik’s may be unique: he lost the premise of his latest book. Near the tail end of the housing boom, Wasik—a personal finance columnist for Bloomberg News and the author of a dozen books—was working on a book arguing that... Read more
Brown’s Line on House-Hunting—Plus Bungalow News
By Dennis Rodkin
Maybe it’s not auspicious to launch a website that lets house-hunters find real estate listings near their preferred transit stops in the same week that the Chicago Transit Authority threatens a new round of service cuts and fare increases. Fortunately, Tom Brown is taking the long-term view... Read more
Olympic Fallout
By Dennis Rodkin
Last Friday I was part of a panel on WBEZ discussing Chicago’s failed Olympic bid. Asked to anticipate the impact of the decision on the local housing scene, I responded essentially as I would have had Chicago emerged a winner: Not much. Read more
Who’s Buying at 1994 Prices?
By Dennis Rodkin
This is one of the rougher properties we have, but somebody’s going to turn it around,” Kristian Harris said as we stood in the bashed-up bathroom of the house at 6027 South Marshfield in Englewood. The plumbing fixtures were all out of order, the floors and walls were beaten up, and... Read more
The Hardest-Hit Communities
By Dennis Rodkin
Each October, with help from Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), Chicago publishes its annual real-estate chart, which, among other things, shows the average price of a house in all 77 city neighborhoods and more than 200 suburbs. The chart also notes how this year’s prices compare to the prior year and to 1994, the earliest year for which MRED has data for most of those neighborhoods and towns. Usually that comparison with 1994 is a heartening measure of the long-term growth in the value of a Chicago-area home. Read more