Real estate news & trends
Latest news from YoChicago
Bellevue Place in the Gold Coast stretches from State St to Lake Shore Drive. It’s basically a single long block book-ended by Tavern on Rush and Gibsons on the west and Oak Street Beach on the east. Anyone setting out to select Chicago’s best blocks would have to consider Bellevue ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on February 1, 2012
The SoNo East RENT NOW sign on the SoNo condo tower is pretty hard to miss, but I don’t recall seeing it before yesterday. The windows haven’t been installed yet on the top two floors of SoNo East, an indication that “RENT NOW” means “move in six months or more ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on February 1, 2012
The following market update arrived via a news release from RE/MAX Northern Illinois: The metropolitan Chicago real estate market enjoyed a solid six months of home sales activity during the last half of 2011, recovering from a lackluster performance during the January-June period to achieve a small increase in transactions ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on February 1, 2012
The headline read 6-tower project planned, and the story began: A Chicago-based developer intends to build a $750 million residential project near downtown that it said will have enough scope and variety to be a new neighborhood. Fifield Cos. is set Thursday to unveil finalized plans for a community called ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on February 1, 2012
Real estate agents will tell you that professionally staged and furnished homes typically sell more quickly than homes that haven’t been staged. Brook Furniture Rental, one of our sponsors, invited us to a before-and-after look at a newly-built 5-bedroom, 5 ½ bath home at 3 Baker Ln in Naperville. The ...
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Posted by sponsored post on January 31, 2012
The newest building on the former site of the sprawling Cabrini-Green housing project is now ready for occupancy. The 7-story 544 Oak at Parkside of Old Town has an on-site fitness center and laundry room and is handicapped-accessible. Based on the ground-level view, above, a number of units will have ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 31, 2012
It’s the last Tuesday of the month, a/k/a Case-Shiller Tuesday, and the results are in for November home price trends. The seasonally-adjusted index for metro-area Chicago single-family homes dropped 2.28% from the previous month and dropped year-over-year by 5.82%. This places the current index just below price levels prevailing in ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 31, 2012
Jimmy McMillan, the 2010 gubernatorial candidate of New York’s Rent Is Too Damn High Party, achieved some notoriety thanks to the many YouTube remixes of his statements during a debate. If you used one of Chicago’s swarm of apartment rental services to find your current home, you paid a month’s ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 31, 2012
Jonathan Jackson is a Technical Engineer with Plumbers Local 130 and a licensed land surveyor. When I stopped to chat with him at K2 at K Station, a 34-story apartment tower under construction in the Fulton River District, he was checking to ensure that nothing outside of the site was ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 31, 2012
We’re justly proud of Chicago’s skyline, but it doesn’t hurt to have the occasional reminder that other cities also evoke a sense of awe and wonder. A hat tip to Curbed National for finding this dazzling video of seven BASE jumpers stepping off the top of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 30, 2012
Eugenie Terrace, 1730 N Clark St, is offering $1,000 discounts on the first month’s rent on select studio and one-bedroom apartments. To qualify, however, you’ll have to start your lease no later than tomorrow. Start by February 14th and take $500 off your first month’s rent. Three high-floor, west-facing one-bedrooms ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 30, 2012
Five years ago today we called attention to a new condo development planned for 3823 N Ashland Ave, in Lake View. One- to three-bedroom units, tricked out with the usual goodies, were priced from the $340s to the $720s. A check of the public records indicates that the units sold ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 30, 2012
The so-called Winthrop Kenmore corridor has long been a troubled area, home to a largely transient population. According to Compass Rose: In the 1960s and 70s, when the neighborhood was at its low point, the Winthrop-Kenmore corridor was called Arson Alley because 25% of the buildings were empty and vacant. ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 30, 2012
Videos at YoChicago’s primary YouTube channel have been viewed more than two million times. To put that number in some perspective, YoChicago videos – all of them local – have been viewed more times than videos at Coldwell Banker’s heavily-promoted national YouTube channel, which had 1,904,699 views as of a ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 28, 2012
This is the second in a series of videos from my recent drive around Lincoln Park with David Nadler. In the first video we looked at lakefront high-rise condos renting at what Nadler deemed bargain prices compared to managed apartment buildings in the area. In this video Nadler takes me ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 27, 2012
The spectacular duplex penthouse at 445 E North Water St was listed for sale at $4.89 million when I toured it with Prudential Rubloff’s Prudential Rubloff‘s Joanne Nemerovski several years ago. A year later the price had fallen to $3.49M, and the riverfront property was in foreclosure. It sold for ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 27, 2012
The Thorndale Beach North Condominium, 5901 N Sheridan Rd, was pictured as the home of Bob and Emily Hartley in the 1970s Bob Newhart Show. The scene at the building currently resembles an episode of the Jerry Springer Show, according to a recent post at Marina City Online and posts ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 27, 2012
The market for downtown Chicago apartment towers has been active lately, and River North has been the strongest submarket. EnV, 161 W Kinzie, sold recently for a heady $483,000 per unit. Flair Tower changed hands at $87 million, $439,000 per unit. One Superior Place sold earlier this year for $320 ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 27, 2012
The documents prepared to nominate properties or districts for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places are often wonderfully entertaining reads. It’s a pity that so very few of them are available online. The following quotes are taken from the submission for the Belden Stratford, 2300 N Lincoln Park ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 27, 2012
Chicagoans love their two- to four-unit buildings, with the three-flat being one of the more popular configurations. According to the US Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, nearly half a million metro Chicago housing units are in two- to four-unit properties, and one in five of those units is owner-occupied. The ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 26, 2012
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