The Property: When the Northbrook developer Greg Weissman built on these two neighboring lots in Highland Park, he decided to go as green as he could while still building houses that would appeal to the upper-end North Shore market. Designed by Nate Kipnis (see “A Place in the Sun,” Deal Estate, April 2007), each house has four bedrooms, four baths, and lots of green amenities. The slate roofs are actually made of rubber and plastic that are 90 percent postindustrial content; the homes are well insulated and geothermally heated and cooled; and a storage tank beneath the front yard collects rain water for use in the yards’ drip-irrigation system. The houses have no carpeting (to soothe dust allergies), and the paints and other finishes are low in volatile organic compounds. Building the houses necessitated taking down a century-old oak; Weissman had it milled into front doors and mantelpieces for both houses.
Price Points: Weissman says the green features add about $100,000 to the cost of each house—he hasn’t calculated the potential savings on utility bills—but that he is hoping to attract buyers who share his environmental principles. “This is the way everything is going now,” he says. “Doing the right thing environmentally actually matters.”
For some time now, homeowners in Chicago have realized that they are more insulated from volatility on the real-estate scene than other U.S. markets. There are two main reasons for that relative stability. Prices here don’t go up as fast as in the big cities on the coast; that means they don’t have as far to fall in an economic downturn. What’s more, the Chicago market doesn’t have as many speculators, who tend to run from the market once prices lose their buoyancy.
Now, the fallout from failing “subprime” mortgage lenders—companies that make home loans to buyers with poor credit ratings or no down payment—has revealed two more ways that Chicago’s housing market may be more resilient than markets in other parts of the country. Dianne Swonk—the chief economist at Mesirow Financial and one of Chicago’s premier consumer economists—tells Deal Estate that subprime lending here is likely targeted at a more reliable group of home buyers than in places like Ohio and Florida, where huge numbers of subprime borrowers have recently defaulted on their loans.
“The Hispanic proliferation into the suburbs has been one of the major fueling factors in the growth of the Chicago housing market,” Swonk says. Fortunately, she adds, “Chicago has a very well-developed immigrant lending market.”
Because some of those potential homebuyers headed for the suburbs may not yet have a well-established credit history, they often get subprime mortgages—but not the predatory kind that are making currently making headlines, Swonk says. Subprime mortgages that rely on financial basics—such as requiring a reliable household income—are a good way to bring people into the housing market.
And since many of these immigrant borrowers have game plans for financial success, they are not likely to find themselves unable to pay and wind up in foreclosure, Swonk says. While some subprime loans certainly went to people whose wobbly work lives will make paying a mortgage tough, she believes that the huge numbers of foreclosures that are devastating places like Cleveland won’t be seen here.
An additional measure of local strength is also evident in data released by San Francisco’s First American Loan Performance. Chicago’s load of subprime mortgages is about 19.8 percent of all mortgages, below the national average of 22.25 percent—and way below four cities in California and Virginia where over 40 percent of mortgages were subprime.
Suburb: Hinsdale List price: $3.1999 million Sale Price: $2.65 million
The Property: Designed and built in 1929 by the Buurma Brothers—the two Dutch immigrants who put up several of River Forest’s best-looking mansions—this lavishly restored, 13-room Spanish Revival–style mansion has many of its original details, including wood-inlay interior doors, a backyard allée of trees leading to a sculptured fountain, and bulbous copper gutters with twisting downspouts climbing down the façade. The house has five bedrooms, three fireplaces, and a separate apartment above the three-car garage. The lot is just under an acre. In the 20 years they lived here, the sellers (not yet identified in public records) replaced the terra cotta roof and all the windows; when they added a family room, they had replicas made of existing columns and balusters to extend the house’s Mediterranean character into the new space.
Price Points: At least two different potential buyers wanted to tear down and replace this beauty. The sellers were horrified and reduced their asking price from $3.495 million to $3.199 million. Ultimately they attracted buyers who already lived nearby and have no intention of tearing it down, says the sellers’ agent.
Sales agent: Beau Carstensen of Crawford Group Sotheby’s Realty
A few years ago, the Bridgeport Village subdivision was the lead horse on the team pulling forward the housing stock in Bridgeport, the onetime blue-collar South Side neighborhood that has given Chicago five of its mayors (including, of course, Richard M. Daley). Now a significant piece of the plan is on hold because the development has filed for bankruptcy protection.
Back in 2004, big new brick houses, priced at $540,000 and up, were rising on several blocks along the east side of the Chicago River north of 35th Street. Developers planned to add many more houses—including more than 100 on the west side of the river—where they had bought nearly 14 acres of industrial land. They also envisioned one or two bridges that would span the river and link together the two parts of the development. To date, would-be homeowners have bought 102 houses in Bridgeport Village, all on the east side of the river.
But Bridgeport Village hit a rough patch in January 2005, when the city, alleging building-code violations, temporarily halted construction at the development. Work resumed later that summer, but it set off a rancorous dispute among Bridgeport Village’s three-man development team: Tom Snitzer on one side, and John Kinsella and Sid Diamond on the other. Kinsella and Diamond removed Snitzer as project manager in 2005, setting off a querulous blame game that includes back-and-forth allegations about mismanagement and political intrigue. (Citing court documents, the Chicago Tribune reported that Kinsella and Diamond charged Snitzer had left unpaid millions of dollars in bills related to the development; in an earlier lawsuit, wrote the Trib, Snitzer alleged that he was forced out of Bridgeport Village because he refused to pay kickbacks to well-connected political operatives.)
All this will be hashed out in U.S. Bankruptcy Court—and elsewhere—over the next few years. What is pertinent right now is that the project’s bankruptcy attorney, Steve Towbin, tells Deal Estate that all the land on the west side of the river is going to be sold off to cover some of development’s unpaid bills. “We’re going to sell it, that’s the plan,” says Towbin, of Shaw Gussis Fishman Glantz Wolfson and Towbin. “Residential is the way to maximize the value of that land, and it seems to me that whoever buys it is going to want to build residential.”
Towbin acknowledged that nothing is certain until a buyer is found, including whether the new owner will follow through on the original plan, bridges and all, or draw up its own layout. “It may or may not become formally a part of Bridgeport Village,” says Towbin.
Which means that pretty picture of neighborhood residents strolling along a slim footbridge over the river is stalled, and so is the plan to give people in the already-built houses on the east side of the river a cozy, leafy view of the west bank. The view of a truck garage and a cement batch plant that are there now will stay as is, at least until another developer who has in mind a cheery picture of the neighborhood comes along.
The Property: Built in 1966, this 12-room house overlooking Lake Michigan has five bedrooms, approximately 9,500 square feet of living space, and a three-car garage. Bruce and Betsy D’Alba have lived there since 1991 and transformed the place from its simpler early incarnation. Today the stucco exterior has shapes and textures imprinted on it. Inside, most of the floors have colorful angular inlays; the lake views are framed by 12-foot-tall windows and a 100-foot-long steel handrail emblazoned with stylized human figures and repeating swirls; and the entry hall and living room are separated by a kettle-shaped double fireplace (created by the local design eminence Jordan Mosher) that is sheathed in deep red mahogany and topped with an undulating stainless steel crown. The kitchen and family room are slightly more subdued, the recent work of DMAC Architects. The home’s custom furnishings are also for sale.
Price Points: The D’Albas, who are looking for a new place in the city, know that houses at this sky-high price—particularly one with such an idiosyncratic décor—can stay on the market for a while. Its Lake Michigan site (on two thirds of an acre), its elite street of luxurious homes, and its capacious square footage certainly put the house in the big leagues. Betsy D’Alba expects that a buyer will one day walk through the steel-and-glass front doors “and know what to do with all this, know this is how they want to live.”
Listing agent: Julie Deutsch of Coldwell Banker; 847-835-0236
Neighborhood: University Village, Chicago List price: $1.4 million Sale price: $1.35 million
The Property: This new 4,299-square-foot, eight-room house has four bedrooms, three-plus baths, and a detached three-car garage. Situated in the fast-growing neighborhood that was once home to the ragtag Maxwell Street market, the house is close to a children’s park, a pretty, public rose garden, and a burgeoning shopping and dining district along Halsted Street. This house is the first completed of 43 single-family homes planned for the immediate neighborhood; about 30 of those homes have already been sold.
The Pros: With their trim brick facades and classic detailing, these blocks of single-family homes feel like an old-line haven of fine city dwellings. The University of Illinois at Chicago, St. Ignatius High School, and the many hospitals of the Illinois Medical District are all nearby—and the South Loop and the Loop are only a little farther away.
The Cons: This will soon be a lively, walkable neighborhood—there is already a slew of new restaurants and a Barbara’s Bookstore—but for now, it’s still a work in progress. Construction is heavy on the surrounding blocks, and even when that’s completed and the noise and the dust subside, there is still the Dan Ryan Expressway, which hangs overhead less than one block east.
Seller: According to the sales agent, the couple who contracted for this house made other plans and turned around and sold the place as soon as they closed on it (they never lived there). Their names are not identified in public records.
Buyer: Not identified in public records
Sales agent: River Realty’s Patricia Blagojevich—also known as the First Lady of Illinois
The Property: This new brick-and-stone house has four bedrooms, three-plus baths, two fireplaces, two laundry rooms, and a rooftop deck that sits atop a two-car garage. Three of the four bedrooms are on the second floor; the fourth is in the basement. The master bath has a steam shower with body sprays and a separate Jacuzzi tub. There are Brazilian cherry floors throughout the house.
Price Points: Once a sleepy neighborhood, Avondale is a smart place to put your money now. It has a great location (the Kennedy Expressway and the CTA Blue Line are nearby and easily accessible), and house prices are still reasonable, making Avondale an attractive alternative to nearby Logan Square (to the south) and Lake View (to the east, across the Kennedy). According to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois, 11 new Avondale houses sold over the past year for $599,000 and up. Older rehabbed frame houses top out at $489,000; the highest price on record is $750,000, for a house not far from this one.
Cons: A Dominick’s and a Walgreen’s are within walking distance, but you have to cross busy Belmont Avenue to get there. And the Kennedy, only two blocks away, can be very noisy.
Listing agent: Jason Schram of Goldberg & Perl; 773-549-1539
Suburb: Winnetka List price: $3.775 million Sale price: $3.55 million
The Property: This new 13-room mansion has six full bathrooms (plus two partials), six fireplaces, and six bedrooms; the master bedroom and two others are on the second floor, there are two more on the third floor, and the sixth bedroom is in the 3,300-square-foot basement—which also has a kitchen, a media room, a gym, and an exercise suite. The 304-square-foot living room has extensive millwork trim. Built of scrubbed brick, the house has a classic French ambiance, from its boxwood-lined front walk to its mansard roof. There is even a second mansard roof, with rounded copper dormers no less, atop the detached garage.
Pros: The house, which is served by New Trier High School’s District 203, is perfectly situated in Winnetka, just a block from a Lake Michigan beach (for village residents only), and five blocks from the suburb’s pretty little downtown.
The Property: When the Northbrook developer Greg Weissman built on these two neighboring lots in Highland Park, he decided to go as green as he could while still building houses that would appeal to the upper-end North Shore market. Designed by Nate Kipnis (see “A Place in the Sun,” Deal Estate, April 2007), each house has four bedrooms, four baths, and lots of green amenities. The slate roofs are actually made of rubber and plastic that are 90 percent postindustrial content; the homes are well insulated and geothermally heated and cooled; and a storage tank beneath the front yard collects rain water for use in the yards’ drip-irrigation system. The houses have no carpeting (to soothe dust allergies), and the paints and other finishes are low in volatile organic compounds. Building the houses necessitated taking down a century-old oak; Weissman had it milled into front doors and mantelpieces for both houses. 
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