Chitownproperty

Last week Dennis Rodkin of Chicago Magazine’s Deal Estate blog featured an unfinished development at 2609 West Belmont in Lakeview. It was supposed to be a 46-unit condo building with prices ranging from from $269,900 to $389,900, but the developer ran out of money and stopped work over a year ago. The accompanying photo gallery chronicling the development from its original artist’s rendering to the shell of a building left standing is a fascinating reminder of the promise and changes in the recent Chicago condo market.

If you’re in the market for a condo right now but looking for a way to control utility costs after you move in, NewHomeNotebook’s list of green developments might be just what you need. It lists all the active new developments in Chicago that bill themselves as eco-friendly.

What to know before choosing a developer — – chicagotribune.com

The Tribune posted a nice guide this week for how to perform due diligence on a developer if you are buying a new home, with tips for checking up on their track record and history with the city, pricing selections, and warranty items.

Millenium Park has been a catalyst for residential real estate development downtown, causing the center of the city’s urban living to move progressively south. This lengthy profile in the New York Times details the park’s effect on the market.

Buying new construction in the city isn’t all about condos. There are plenty of single-family homes to be found, either as infill or in planned developments. This article from the Sun-Times profiles a handful of these new developments.

The New York Times has a feature today on two highly-anticipated developments in Chicago, the Fordham Spire and 600 North Fairbanks, designed by “starchitects” who are continuing the city’s tradition of ambitous design.

With CBS 2 moving from its current location in Streeterville to new digs at Block 37 (someday), developers have submitted a proposal to the city zoning committee for two new 50-story residential towers. The towers, holding 807 rental apartments, would rise from a shared base featuring shops and offices which the developers, Golub & Co, hope might attract medical groups from Northwestern Hospital.

Yesterday, city aldermen approved project plans for the Fordham Spire, a 2,000-foot residential and hotel tower designed by architect Santiago Calatrava that will become the country’s tallest building. Although originally met with skepticism, the project, which will be built at 420 E. North Water Street in Streeterville, sailed through the city council on a unanimous vote. It seems that they were taken with the building’s twisting design, even cold-hearted old Ald. Burt Natarus, who asked to keep the sketches. The building will feature 300 condos in the $1 million to $2 million price range, and could be completed by 2010.

The first sprouts of the new Trump Tower have emerged from the construction site, and the Tribune’s architecture critic Blair Kamin says that while the thought of a new skyscraper is exciting, it’s also a little scary:

The first structural columns for the 92-story hotel-condo tower have popped above Wabash Avenue and, all of a sudden, the project seems very real and, truth be told, a little terrifying.

You look at those round, gray concrete columns and you imagine them stacked endlessly in the sky. Patches of blue will disappear. So will cherished views, like the one from the Michigan Avenue Bridge of the elegant black slab of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s IBM Building.

Yet the heart beats faster at the prospect of Chicago reaching into the sky. Busting into the clouds is in the city’s blood. Nothing like this has happened since the boxy, black mass of the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, once the world’s tallest building and still the nation’s tallest, soared above the gritty Loop in 1974.

The construction is scheduled to take almost 4 1/2 years, finishing in 2008.

A quick rundown of this weekend’s real estate news sections:

• An overview of the International Builders Show by the Sun-Times focuses on building materials and home fixtures to be featured by home builders in the coming years.
• Several new high rises in the city take advantage of their proximity to Millennium Park, including the fabulous Heritage.
• There are a million large-scale residential remodeling projects undertaken each year, but buyers getting ready to take the plunge on a fixer-upper should know how much the repair job will cost, what home values the community will support, and most importantly, whether they can handle living in the middle of a mess.
• Owning investment property can afford significant tax benefits, in addition to the usual gains from appreciation and rental income.
• Buying a home near a major street may have its drawbacks, with the added congestion and noise, but you can usually get a lot more house for your money.
• Football may have nothing to do with buying a home, but Super Bowl weekend usually marks the kickoff of the annual buying season.
• The government encourages home ownership through tax incentives like the ability to deduct mortgage interest, but did you know they also provide loans for down payments?

A quick rundown of this past weekend’s local real estate news sections:

• Ever wonder how builders can work through all that snow? Contractors don’t slow down during winter months, but they do have to take special precautions to make sure concrete and masonry cures properly.
• The cost of living in college dorms has risen so high that some students have been finding ways to apply for government-subsidized housing intended for low income families. But starting next week, new rules passed by Congress will take the student’s parents’ income into consideration in most cases, even if the student claims to be living independently.
• Home heating retailers say sales of wood-burning stoves are up anywhere from 30 to 50 percent this season as people search for lower-cost heating and cooking alternatives to gas.
• Maybe you can’t afford the dream of living off the grid in one fell swoop, but you can start using enough solar power to make a difference, little by little.
• Rising interest rates are starting to squeeze homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages, no longer able to bail themselves out by refinancing their home based on double-digit price appreciation.
• Having trouble choosing cabinet finishes? Check out this guide to new cabinet options.
• More buyers are making offers with home sale contingencies, citing longer market times as reason to safeguard their position before committing to a new home. In a hot market, submitting an offer contingent upon selling an existing home would weaken a buyer’s negotiating position, because other buyers would likely be willing to make an offer with no such restrictions. But as the market cools, more people are willing to take this risk in order to make sure they have the proceeds from the sale of their home in hand for a downpayment.

Sunday’s Sun-Times Homelife section ran a spotlight on the West Roscoe Village neighborhood, a “vintage blue-collar industrial neighborhood.” The area is bounded by Western Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway and Diversey and Addison, bisected by the north branch of the Chicago River.

The neighborhood has drawn interest because of its affordability in comparison to those closer to downtown, as many other residential areas north and west of the city do. It offers an enticing mix of two- and three- flat apartments, single-family homes, and empty lots for development. The article details a number of development projects in the area.

The owners of the famed, Mies van der Rohe-designed IBM Building downtown are considering converting all or part of the building to condos. The building is 32 percent vacant after IBM moved out, and Jenner & Block–which rents another 22 percent of the building–will move out in 2010. The conversions will be a tough sell though. The building’s existing views will be blocked by the new Trump Tower next door, though living next to the Donald’s planned development and its new restaurants and health club may be an attractive bonus.

Parking garage operator Interpark, a division of General Electric, has filed a zoning application with the city to build a 44-story, 335 unit residential tower at 215 W. Washington, the former site of one of the city’s oldest parking garages. The company hasn’t said whether the units will be sold or rented, but expects construction to begin in 2006.

From the Sun-Times:

Some of the best houses in a new development might be the ones sold last. Savvy builders have learned that when the final units are being completed there had better be a variety of sizes in good locations or they might be on the market for a while.

The last buyers often can pick up price discounts, free upgrades and options and all the bells and whistles that the builder might have put into his model homes, such as professional decorating and fancy fixtures.