Chicago Illinois Real Estate Blog

Jonathan P. Crannell and his wife, Cara, bought a four-bedroom, 1.5-bath home at 341 South Julian St. in Naperville from Maureen V. Kelly and Paul A. Zillmann for $330,000 on May 19.

The 1,224-square-foot house was built in 1951 in Greater Huntington Estates.

Mr. Crannell is a lawyer with the law firm of Quinn, Meadowcroft & Marker. His practice focuses on personal injury and workers’ compensation.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Miami University and received his J.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 1,622 home sales in Naperville during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $354,500.

Source

Despite all of the recent reports on home prices falling, there is still hope for Chicago Real Estate!  In fact, there is some good momentum down in the ‘grass roots’ of the industry, namely the brokers and agents who continue to keep the faith and work hard for their clients.  I have been fortunate, and was recently named by the President of Coldwell Banker’s parent company, NRT, as one of the Top 1% Brokers in the country!

I don’t normally go into too much detail about my business but in the face of the recent negative articles about the local market I have taken on three new listings recently.  They are all very attractive properties that will generate some nice interest.

First, a 3 Bedroom Condo in the awe-inspiring John Hancock Center at 175 E. Delaware.  Bruce Graham made his mark on history by designing this unforgettable building, and the person who becomes the lucky new owner of this 70th Floor unit will love seeing what it is like to live in the Sky.

Second, a 2 Bedroom in the classic Park Newberry.  Anyone with a nose for History will love this unit, directly across from famous Bughouse Square and the world-renowned Newberry Library, home to a unique collection of World Maps going back hundreds of years.  A beautiful layout and spectacular South views from the oversize balcony.
[Read more →]

Springtime is usually boom time for those looking to buy or sell a home. But in 2011, three years into the worst housing bust since the Great Depression, both buyers and sellers are sitting on their hands.

Take Nikkie Hartmann, whose Albany Park condo is now worth $80,000, 44 percent less than the $143,000 she paid for it in 2006. She carries a mortgage for 100 percent of the purchase price.

“I am so underwater in my loan that I don’t believe I will be able to sell it for many years,” Hartmann said. She is renting out the property for $850 per month.

Hartmann’s condo is part of the “shadow” inventory of properties waiting to be sold if and when home prices rebound. Other properties in this category are delinquent, in foreclosure or bank-owned.

Dale Anderson, broker associate at Weichert Realtors-Nickel Group, says he has several clients in the Oak Park and River Forest area who are holding off on selling their homes.

In fact, Illinois has the third-largest shadow inventory in the nation, following Florida and California, with 121,266 properties waiting to be sold, according to the National Association of Realtors in a March report.

Standard & Poor’s Corp. estimated that at the end of the first quarter, Chicago had a 65-month supply of such homes, meaning it would take more than five years to clear the shadow inventory. That compares with an average 52-month supply for the entire U.S.

The overhang acts as an invisible weight pushing prices down even more and sending more mortgage borrowers under water. Many real estate analysts say housing prices won’t rebound until the shadow inventory is absorbed.

“It’s very understandable” that potential home sellers would wait to sell, Anderson said. “There’s a prevailing attitude and mindset that people are still scared. They think that the economy will go down more, that housing values are going to go down more.”
[Read more →]

Many homeowner’s and investors in the Chicago area are disappointed by the current value of their residential property that appears to still be decreasing.  They are concerned "if and when" the price for their home will return from record lows.

Most who bought their home between 2000 and 2007, during the housing "bubble" are greatly affected by the downturn in the market.  The value of their property is often 30-40% less than the market highs during this time; much lower than economists expected.  Many homeowners that do not have to sell are waiting on the sidelines for the residential market to improve.  But, will it and when?

The driving issue which is slowing down a recovery is the large amount of foreclosures that are still entering the Chicago market from homeowners and investors that can’t afford to maintain and finance their property.

Keith Jurow who publishes the MVP Housing Report that analyzes the top cities in the country by accumulating data from a number of sources including: realtytrac.com, Midwest Real Estate Data and FNC.com, predicts that the value of homes in the Chicago metro area will continue to decline. Here are some of his findings:

1. For the first (3) months of this year, more than 50% of all sales in Chicago were REO’s or short sales.  In the seven county Chicago metro markets, nearly 52% of all sales in February were distressed properties.  These numbers tell us that the amount of "normal" sales is steadily shrinking, bringing down the value of all residential real estate.
2. Prices for single-family homes less than 2,000 sq.ft. are back to levels of 8/2002, which means they are worth less than owner’s paid.  So few buyers between 2004-2006 provided a down payment more than 10% with most having a total mortgage debt that exceeds the current value of their home.
3. 45,182 properties had foreclosure fillings serves on them in 2009 and even more in 2010.  For the six county Chicago areas this swells to 150,000.
4. There are a large number of first liens that are delinquent by 90-plus days that have not even been put into default yet by servicing banks.
5. At the end of 2010, more than 11% of all active first liens in the Greater Chicago MSA were seriously delinquent by at least 90 or more days or in a formal default.

The bottom-line is that we are still in for a "rocky road" in Chicago residential real estate.  For more information on the Chicago report by Keith Jurow check out MVP Housing Report on the popular investor site, Minyanville.

Source

Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. (BEE) agreed to acquire the 49% interest it doesn’t already own in the InterContinental Chicago from Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund in a deal that values the hotel at $288.3 million.

Government of Singapore Investment Corp., known as GIC, will receive about 10.8 million Strategic Hotels shares at an issuance price of $6.50 each and $11.8 million of cash. The deal, expected to close in the current quarter, will leave GIC with about 5.8% of the real-estate investment trust’s expected 185.6 million Strategic Hotels shares outstanding.

GIC in May 2007 acquired a 49% interest in the REIT’s InterContinental Chicago and Hyatt Regency La Jolla hotels in a deal valued at about $450 million.

Strategic Hotels earlier this month reported that its first-quarter loss narrowed as revenue improved by 13% due to higher occupancy and average daily rates.

Shares closed Friday at $6.59 and were inactive premarket. The stock is up 25% this year.

Source

Rahm Emanuel so far has done a decent job of mingling jubilation with humility over becoming mayor of Chicago.

Maybe the size of the task before him has kept his ego in check. Maybe it’s the knowledge that a bench-load of rivals waits for him to make hard decisions and deplete his political capital so they can make him a one-termer.

He campaigned and at his inauguration he spoke with his legendary focus. Emanuel is like a cheetah stalking a wildebeest when it comes to focus. His prey is shortcomings in public safety, education and jobs. In a word, he’s staking his future on livability. If Chicago had a livability index, Emanuel would hope to lift it in four years.

To succeed, he must never forget Chicago’s tale of the lost 200,000.

That’s the number of people the city lost in the 2010 census. The 10-year exodus surprised many people who think they know Chicago, especially if they spend all their time in café-laden neighborhoods where developers shoehorned condos everywhere they could. Housing crisis or not, these neighborhoods are doing fine.

Then there are the neighborhoods where most of the population loss occurred. I call them the forlorn 30 percent of Chicago, a guesstimate, mostly black communities on the South and West sides where no investment occurs and the only commercial anchor may be the drug trade.

It’s where the people who are able have left, leaving blocks that are empty or under-used.

May I suggest that Emanuel’s success depends on that forlorn 30 percent? The neighborhoods are uncompetitive, but they have land and it’s the key to their turnaround.
[Read more →]

It was all sweetness and smiles in Chicago on Monday as the famously hotheaded Rahm Emanuel shed his former White House persona and became the Windy City’s first new mayor in 22 years.

Out of the frying pan of national politics, and now, into an entirely new fire, the former Obama administration chief of staff’s voiced cracked with emotion. Fitting for a hometown boy who made good banging heads together in Washington, and now is putting his all into remaking the city that sired him.

But Chicago, beset with a budget shortfall the size of Lake Michigan, doesn’t expect a long honeymoon. The Tribune is already running a tongue-in-cheek “Pick the Moment Rahm Totally Loses It Sweepstakes,” timed to coincide with the rude fiscal awakening in store for Mayor Emanuel.

Flanked by his predecessor, Richard Daley, and a cluster of dignitaries that included Vice President Joe Biden, Emanuel took the oath of office under sunny skies in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park — a stunning urban landscape built upon an abandoned railyard that stands today as the crowning jewel of the Daley era.

Emanuel heaped praise upon Daley — and then served notice that the old ways are over. Chicago, he vowed, is about to do more with less. Much less, given a spiraling budget shortfall projected to reach $655 million in 2011.

“New times demand new answers. Old problems cry out for better results. This morning we leave behind the old ways and old divisions and begin a new day for Chicago,” Emanuel told a crowd of several thousand Chicagoans.
[Read more →]

The W Chicago - City Center was sold to Chesapeake Lodging Trust for $128.8 million yesterday by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, though the hotel chain will continue managing the property as a W Hotel, after signing a 40-year contract. The 368-room hotel includes more than 12,000 square feet of meeting space, a fitness center and the recently renovated IPO restaurant. The 22-story building is in Chicago’s West Loop near the financial district.

Source

With another week and a half until the Illinois Association of Realtors announces April home sales for Chicago I’m here to tell you that they’re going to be down around 28% from last year. Actually, my preliminary numbers indicate they will be down 27.9%. But that was totally expected since last year’s numbers were artificially pumped up by the government charity program for the real estate industry (and then we wonder why our deficit is so high). Expect to see more numbers dramatically lower than last year until we get to July.

Looking at contract activity for Chicago as a more current measure of real estate market conditions we see that at least contract activity is running higher than 2009, which is better than how the back half of 2010 performed. See the graph below.

Full Article: Chicago Home Sales Drop 28% In April

Gary Jungels and Veronika Jungels sold a four-bedroom, four-bath home at 22662 Hunters Trail in Frankfort to Frank Casamento and Angela Casamento for $485,000 on April 11.

The property is in the area South of Lincoln Hwy.. It is part of the Timbers Edge subdivision.

Mr. Jungels, a transactional attorney, is a partner in the corporate and securities practice of the law firm Mayer Brown LLP. He previously worked as an auditor at Ernst & Young LLP.

He obtained his B.B.A. from University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law.

The Jungelses previously sold Unit #3FE at 549 W. Belden Ave. in Lincoln Park for $305,000 in April 2002 and their home at 3714 N. Marshfield Ave. in Lake View for $659,000 in Sept. 2005.

According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 397 home sales in Frankfort during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $270,000.

Source