Colorful Web site fills online void, covering North Shore housing, neighborhoods
Illinois has three ZIP codes where the median price of a home is more than $1 million, according to Zillow Blog, and – no surprise here – they all happen to be in the tony North Shore. What is surprising, given the upscale nature of these northern suburbs and the lavish homes that line their streets, is the near total lack of real estate coverage online for Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe and the other ‘burbs that comprise “the Shore.”
Joe Zekas, founder of the Web site YoChicago.com, has made filling this void his personal mission. YoChicago is a multi-faceted Web site affiliated with New Homes Magazine that aims to cover Chicagoland housing and neighborhoods honestly on a hyper-local level, according to Zekas.
The Wilmette resident is building individual Web sites for each city neighborhood and suburb in Chicagoland at YoChicago, and the North Shore group of sites is among his top priorities. Readers can access the sites by clicking on “Journals” at YoChicago.com or by typing the sites’ individual Web addresses – YoEvanston.com, YoWilmette.com, YoHighlandPark.com, etc. – into their browsers.
If these seem like odd names for real estate Web sites that’s because Yo’s approach – playful, humorous and at times, edgy and irreverent, is the antithesis of the real estate-speak found on other sites and in print media.
Photos galore
“The tone of discussion for people looking to move to these communities has been more about affluence, shopping, demographics and all kinds of dry stuff,” Zekas said. “We’re looking to supplement that with tons of photography. What do these places look like? What do the people who live here look like?”
A recent post on YoWinnetka, for instance, had the headline “Curb appall” and lambasted the style of a newly built house as “Tinley Park revival.” Other posts dwell on everything from sidewalk sales to squirrel traps to little-known North Shore parks. Open houses, market trends, floor plans and construction updates are omnipresent, but statistics are used sparingly. Instead, the sites rely heavily on photos to convey a sense of the communities covered.
Yo’s North Shore journals already have more than 1,700 housing and general lifestyle photos hosted at www.Flickr.com/Photos/YoNorthShore. Unlike many sites with real estate content, YoChicago is happy to link to other Web sites and help its readers navigate the mass of information, photos and resources proliferating on the Internet.
“People looking for housing have to do a massive amount of research, and sites run by real estate brokers are constrained by having to sell property. They can’t always be honest. They can’t piss anyone off,” Zekas said. “YoChicago’s journals provide people with access to a different level of information, as opposed to sites purely focused on trying to sell something.”
Teardown tattler
On the hot topic of teardowns, for instance, Yo’s North Shore sites have shown the good, the bad and the ugly on a block-by-block basis.
“Essentially the North Shore of Chicago is a landlocked, built-up area without significant new parcels of land for development,” Zekas said. “Ninety-eight percent of what’s taking place is the teardown of existing homes and the construction of new ones. That’s obviously been the subject of much concern and debate.”
As teardown permits are filed, Yo’s North Shore journals will show what goes down, what goes up and the construction in between.
“What’s going down doesn’t have much value visually,” Zekas said. “In a lot of cases it’s crappy, ’60s ranch-style houses, pretty much butt-ugly stuff, and what’s going up is generally pretty tasteful and more respectful of the historical context of the communities.”
Highly interactive
Disagree? There’s plenty of room for you to object at Yo’s North Shore sites. Readers can add their comments to any post, e-mail tips or photos or join an interactive forum on a community or topic. YoChicago had just launched 700 forums and counting at press time. There’s one for every community in Chicagoland and for specialized topics ranging from
architecture to strip malls.
Motivated readers also can join the journals for their communities as contributors by signing up with Zekas. The YoChicago model calls for a network of volunteers to take ownership of these Web sites, creating a “diversity of voices.” Some might be business owners, community leaders or housing professionals, but most are simply residents who care about the place they live. YoChicago is peppered with calls for readers to e-mail Zekas, YoJoe@YoChicago.com, to sign up as contributors to various journals.
“We just want to provide people information and let them draw their own conclusions. We want to show what isn’t being shown,” Zekas said.
Sometimes, Zekas admits, that information will only serve to corroborate perceptions of the North Shore as an exclusive millionaire’s club.
He adds, “People who think life is unfair don’t really know just how unfair it is until they visit the North Shore.”