Favorite Music: radiohead, death cab for cutie, Kanye West, OAR, the shins, lupe fiasco, Beck, Bloc Party, the clash, the cure, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Keys, Vampire Weekend, Spoon, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Girl Talk, Broken Social Scene, Raveonettes, Mates of state, Cat Power, Band of Horses, rogue wave, the white stripes, white stripes

- From EcoLogic Lofts' Facebook profile.

More and more developers and marketers are turning to Facebook to promote their projects, but I haven't seen any developments as ready to reveal as much personal information and interests as EcoLogic Lofts, the eco-friendly mid-rise planned for 2359 N Seeley Ave in Bucktown.

Along with that slate of indie-rock faves, EcoLogic also digs Diablo Cody and Wes Anderson flicks, thrift stores, dive bars and bowling. (Sounds like someone needs to give 565 Quincy a poke.) Senco Properties' project is a single female interested in men and women, and she graduated from The University of Chicago in 2006 with degrees in environmental studies, architecture, and interior design. Yowza!

If that's not enough, I get the feeling from EcoLogic's profile photo that there's more than one way to conserve water at these condos. Do group showers count toward LEED Silver certification?

- Rate and review EcoLogic Lofts at NewHomeNotebook.com.

Anyone who has traversed the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue just north of North has probably caught a glimpse of the Bloomingdale Line's wall of murals. Alex (above) was nice enough to pose in front of one for photographer Michael Kardas a couple weeks ago. A few minutes later, Kardas tried to hitch a ride down Route 66.

See more of Kardas' photographs on the YoChicago Flickr photostream.

The Ashby, JAB Real Estate's 18-unit condo development at 3844 N Ashland Ave in Lake View, is crawling towards the finish line. A pair of condos have been sold since I posted a sales update at the end of June, and now there are only five. Since June the sales team has changed also, and JAB is selling the remaining homes themselves, whereas before @properties was in charge of sales.

Those five units are priced from the $410s to the $460s, which is pretty close to the price points from the summer. Paul Chason from JAB says monthly assessments should remain below $175.

Chason says all five available homes have two bedrooms and two baths, and they all have about 1,400 square feet of living space. The difference in price is accounted for by which floor a condo is located and how much outdoor space it has. Chason says some units come with as much as 1,000 square-foot balconies, and the building has 10-seat theater room and a common roof deck that Chason says features nice skyline views.

The last time I checked in on this project, one garage parking space was included in the price of the unit, but now each parking space will cost you $15,000. Chason says there are enough parking spaces left in the garage for buyers to each take two.

- Rate and review The Ashby at NewHomeNotebook.com.

Jameson Real Estate recently added another Chicago Graystone project to its list of featured developments. Along with Halsted Row, The Catalina and The Chelsea, the company is now marketing Briar on the Park, a four-unit building at 456 W Briar Pl in Lakeview East.

Jameson's project profile is light on details about the number and types of homes available, but it does say that Briar on the Park is an "extra w-i-d-e" 26-foot brick / limestone building on an "extra w-i-d-e" 33-foot lot. Thanks to the MLS and Chicago Graystone's site, we can piece together a few more details about the units.

Three of Briar on the Park's condos are listed at the moment: A five-bedroom / three-bath "duplex-down" with 3,500 square feet, priced in the $970s, and two three-bedroom / two-bath single-floor units with 1,950 square feet of living space, priced in the $690s and $790s. The project's Web site mentions a third three-bedroom identical to the other two and priced in the $710s, but that unit is not listed in the MLS.

The homes appear to have the expected mix of finishes - hardwood floors in the living areas, stone in the bathrooms, stainless-steel appliances, Grohe and Kohler fixtures - along with some added flourishes like crown molding in the living and dining areas and gas fireplaces. All of the homes have balconies facing out onto Briar and decks in the back.

As its name suggests, Briar on the Park is about a block west of Lincoln Park. (According to Google Maps, it's a five-minute walk to Belmont Harbor.) It shares the 400 block of West Briar Place with Grand Briar Condominiums, a decidedly different type of project, but one with similar price points on the high end. The 11-story rehab at 433 W Briar Pl still has 25 one- to three-bedrooms for sale at prices ranging from the $250s to the $890s.

Every morning, we survey scores of local and national newspapers and magazines, amateur and professional blogs and other interesting Web sites in search of stories that are relevant to Chicago home buyers. We add those stories to own news feed, thereby creating a one-stop news source for anyone interested in Chicago's neighborhoods and new-home market.

Click here to read YoChicago's news feed.

With all of the focus now directed at the 87-story Aqua, it's easy to forget that two of Lakeshore East's other residential towers, The Chandler and 340 on the Park, still have a handful of unsold homes available.

According to Leila Zammatta, senior vice president of sales for Magellan Development Group, The Chandler (above left), located at 450 E Waterside Dr, has a single one-bedroom / 1.5-bath and two three-bedroom / 2.5-baths for sale.

The one-bedroom is a ninth-floor unit with 1,024 square feet, priced in the $490s. One three-bedroom located on the 25th floor has 1,900 square feet and is priced in the $740s. The other, a 22nd-story home with 2,215 square feet, is priced at $1.18 million.

The MLS lists an additional 15 resales at The Chandler, ranging from a second-floor one-bedroom priced in the $340s, all the way up to a $1.89 million three-bedroom on the 33rd floor, which sold in April for $1.41 million.

Of all of Lakeshore East's condo towers, The Chandler is the closest to both the lake and the river, and is almost directly across the river from The Chicago Spire's site in Streeterville. Construction on the Chandler started to wrap around this time last year, according to the Yo archives.

On the other end of the neighborhood-sized development, bordering both the southern edge of Lakeshore East's central park and the northern end of Millennium Park, is 340 on the Park (above right), 340 E Randolph St, where work wrapped early this year.

Back in March, I reported that 340 on the Park was down to its final two units. The floor plan I profiled at that time has since sold, but the other, a 2,750 square-foot three-bedroom on the tower's 56th floor, is still available for the same price of $2.2 million. A contract must have fallen through at some point this spring or summer, because Zammatta says a 16th-floor, 1,900 square foot home with two bedrooms, 2.5 baths and a den is now selling in the $900s.

The MLS lists another 11 resales in the building, ranging from the $540s up to $1.24 million.

- Rate and review The Chandler at NewHomeNotebook.com.
- Rate and review 340 on the Park at NewHomeNotebook.com.

It's often difficult to envision a completed building when looking at a cement skeleton, and New West Realty's 1555 Wabash in the South Loop is no different. With the addition of some glass on the lower residential floors I was hoping to get a better idea of how this building will turn out, but I'm still having a tough time reconciling this structure with the glass box seen in the rendering.

I'm always impressed with artists' ability to take a little creative license and sneak the Sears Tower into renderings where it doesn't belong, but this one (below) is particularly egregious. In this rendering it looks like the Sears is east of Wabash - a full seven blocks from where it stands at 233 S Wacker St. It looks like it could be on Michigan Avenue, and the AT&T Building is even further east.

I understand the iconic status of the Sears and its importance to the Chicago skyline, but to anyone familiar with the city, this rendering could give the impression that 1555 Wabash is more than a half mile from where it's actually located.

- Rate and review 1555 Wabash at NewHomeNotebook.com.

A Chicago Tribune report from Friday finds a silver lining - if however faint - in the housing crisis: Real-estate agents are educating themselves, expanding their vocabularies and improving their craft.

Here are a few choice quotes from the article:

"There has to be a paradigm shift in everyone's thinking…When the boom hit, people couldn't keep up. All you knew is that everyone wanted to buy quickly. It was more a matter of juggling the contracts. It wasn't helping educate them so they can make an informed decision."

-Joan Sinnott, Century 21 Lullo in Addison

"The real estate agent of 10 years ago is not the real estate agent of today. We've become more of a resource for our sellers, rather than you just hire us to sell. The agents today know they have to come to the table prepared and if they don't, it's a challenge."

-Patrick O'Rourke, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage

"[Buyers] should expect that an agent will go back to the basics. I'm constantly having to re-educate myself…We need to put ourselves in the position of building a pipeline for a future business. We have to now counsel them. Before, we were just salespeople. You bring it, we sell it. Now we're going back to the fiduciary responsibility we have."

-Marki Lemons, Rubloff Residential Properties

Upon learning that MCL Companies' new park was open to the public, I took a walk down to Streeterville on Friday and had a look at the new green space, which is located across the street from the River East Art Center and adjacent to the ParkView Tower . The park is bordered by Illinois Street, Grand Avenue, and Peshtigo and McClurg courts.

- Rate and review ParkView at NewHomeNotebook.com.
- Rate and review Lofts at River East Art Center at NewHomeNotebook.com.

Among the pictures photographer Michael Kardas dropped off last week were two shots of construction at Silver Tower, the 40-story high-rise going up at 303 W Ohio St in River North. As we noted a couple weeks ago, the tower's glass is a little more blue than silver, but we'll wait until the whole thing is finished before passing judgment on its execution.

- Rate and review Silver Tower at NewHomeNotebook.com.