Chicago’s new 758-unit Trump Tower made front page news again yesterday after a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter spent more than four hours in blustery conditions on Saturday delivering the building’s communications “spire.” Now, Chicago’s newest luxury hotel and condominium building is officially the second tallest building in the United States at 1,361 feet - just 90 feet shorter than the Sears Tower.

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My listing at 2250 N. Ohio which is listed for sale as well as for rent at $4,750 a month.

I’d like to tip my hat to Jeff Kerr over at the ChiTown Living Blog for pointing out this informative article in the Chicago Tribune about what homeowners need to consider when renting out their homes.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is a conversation I have with my own clients from time to time. Of the 40 properties I have listed for sale at this time, five are also listed for rent.

There are a number of benefits to renting out your home, especially in the current market, but there are also some pitfalls to be considered.

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It’s not every day you can see what $10 million will buy, but if you tuned into NBC 5 last Sunday morning, you had an opportunity to do just that!

I had the pleasure of showing my listing at 1524  N. Astor Street for LXTV’s new television series “OpenHouse Chicago.” You can view the three minute video piece here.

The one challenge with a show like this is that it’s merely a teaser. This one-of-a-kind Gold Coast home has been completely renovated throughout and offers exquisite Art Deco-inspired interior architecture. However, the segment does not afford enough time to cover all the cool details. For example, the koi pond with a running waterfall in the backyard didn’t make the cut!

Still, this home is one of my all-time favorites, and it’s located in an area that is near and dear to me. I lived as a child in a home just a few blocks away, and my grandparents lived two doors down from us.  Our family was friends of the prior owners of this home, and we enjoyed many a holiday party there. Still, it never looked this nice!

You can view our team’s full listing and brochure for 1524 Astor here.

Earlier this fall, Chicago attorney Peter Marx came to our weekly sales meeting at Coldwell Banker’s Gold Coast Office. He had been invited to speak to us about “short sales.”

Until this year, I had never been involved in a short sale. Now, I have good friends who purchased a condo in a conversion in 2005 and have since seen the interest rate on their loan reset to an excessive rate (over 9%) and the husband lose his job. My team and I at Coldwell Banker have been trying to help them sell their condo for a price in excess of their mortgage amount but have received no offers. So, just last week, we canceled and relisted their home at a price that is more than 10% below the principal balance on their mortgage. When we get a buyer, we will work with Peter to contact their lender and negotiate a short sale.

Given that short sales are becoming more frequent in our Chicago area residential market, I asked Peter if he would consider writing a guest post for the blog that I could share with our readers. If you’re considering a short sale yourself or are just curious about this arrangement that has been grabbing headlines, you will find Peter’s post very helpful. - Jenny

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It’s property tax time again, and if you’ve cracked open your recent bill (or a copy of the Chicago Tribune), you know that while your home’s value may have dipped in the past year, your taxes almost certainly haven’t.

If your bill is more than expected, you might investigate the following potential money saving options:

Protest your taxes if they are higher than comparable properties in the area. You might start by calling your real estate agent to ask for help in researching what your neighbors are paying for their property taxes. Then call your real estate attorney to see if they can represent you in a protest filing. If so, know that they are typically compensated based on a percentage of any reduction obtained.

If your real estate tax bill is for your primary home, you should be receiving a “Homeowner’s Exemption.” Depending on the value of your home, this can amount to more than $1,000 in savings per year. You can verify if you are getting the exemption by looking at the Cook County Treasurer’s Website. Click on the “Exemption History” link and then enter your PIN number.

If you are not receiving your Homeowner’s Exemption, you can file a Certificate of Error with the county and get money back. Attorney Kent Novit has helped several of my clients with this process for a nominal fee. His number is (312) 332-2407 ext. 203, and his email address is novitlaw@covad.net.

If you are over 65 years old, you qualify get a Senior Citizen Homestead Break.

In the meantime, don’t forget your second installment bills are due November 2, 2008. If you miss that deadline, then penalties start to accrue.

UPDATE: Alderman Gene Schulter of the 47th Ward has released this notice regarding the filing of assessment appeal complaints for Lakeview township residents.

I’m not the only member of The Jennifer Ames Team who has something to say, so I decided it would be great to periodically turn the blog reigns over to a different member of my team. Our first “guest post” is written by David Wright, our team’s Marketing Associate. I hope you enjoy the new voice!  - Jenny

These boots were made for walking — just like Chicago.

As one of two marketing specialists on The Jennifer Ames Team, I’m always looking for more ways to highlight the amenities to be found near our Chicago luxury listings. We frequently include information in our marketing brochures and Internet copy about retail, dining, and entertainment establishments that are located near the homes we sell. We also use a service called PeekaCity to create interactive amenity maps, which allow online viewers to scope out the neighborhood by what’s most important to them (like Mediterranean cuisine, for example).

Now, there’s a new service called Walk Score, a website that evaluates the “walkability” of an address based on its proximity to a diverse range of amenities. For example, if your home is near a supermarket, a restaurant, a park, and a school, it will earn a high walkability score (on a scale from 0 to 100). If there is nothing much close by, it will garner a much lower score.

Given this criteria, one might expect a vibrant city like Chicago to rate high on the walkability meter, and that’s entirely the case. In fact, Walk Score ranks Chicago as the fourth most walkable city in America (San Francisco, New York, and Boston snag the top slots).

If there’s anyone who appreciates the walkability of Chicago, it’s me. I grew up in a town of 15,000 in Central Minnesota, and despite the benefits of suburban living, the practicality of relying on my own two feet for transportation back home was next to zero. (Actually, according to Walk Score, it was 8/100).

It wasn’t until I studied abroad in China during college that I first set foot in a taxi, a city bus, and a subway. I never had reason to before. I drove everywhere.

After graduating from college and moving to Chicago’s Near North, I traded my four-door Camry for a CTA transit card (though not literally - the CTA doesn’t accept trade-ins).

I hardly noticed my car was gone.

The apartment building where I live has a convenience store, a dry cleaners, and a hair salon on the ground floor. A hardware store is across the street, and a Treasure Island supermarket, my bank, the CTA Red Line, and a major restaurant district are all two blocks away. Most importantly, however, the Magnificent Mile and our Coldwell Banker office at the John Hancock Center is only a 15 minute walk from home.

How does the walkability of my new dig rate according to Walk Score? A perfect 100/100.

Truth be told, Walk Score has its shortcomings (its inability to know whether there are actually sidewalks in the areas it rates is a big one), but nonetheless it’s still a genuine testament to the superior practicality of living Chicago on foot - particularly on the city’s fantastic North Side where our real estate sales team has its focus.

Throw in the scenery of the lakeshore and Lincoln Park - another factor Walk Score doesn’t consider - and you’ve got a very walkable city indeed.

In recent months, a few of my Chicago luxury real estate clients have sold their homes and opted to move into a rental.

Their motives vary widely. Some want to put the proceeds from their sale in the bank and wait for the right home to come along. Others are in a volatile career or financial situation and are reluctant to commit until they achieve more stability in their lives. Still others are renting because they have difficulty meeting the new down payment requirements that lenders require. The decision about whether to rent or buy your next home can be a complicated one - particularly when you throw in unpredictable careers, personal relationships, and market forces beyond our control.

If your decision to rent or to buy is primarily a financial one, then you might want to check out a tool from The New York Times. They have simplified the financial aspects of the decision with their online calculator. You simply enter the variables (rent costs, mortgage rates, property taxes, etc.) and you’re shown a real-time graph of when it’s best to rent and when it’s best to buy.

The difference in costs can easily exceed tens of thousands of dollars, so this is an important calculation to make. An additional rent vs. buy calculator can be found here.

On the flip side, as a residential real estate professional, I am occasionally involved in the rent versus sell discussion with my sellers. After they have moved out and are paying the expense of carrying two homes, they are sometimes feeling some pressure. These sellers have the option of adjusting the price of their home to help get it sold, but occasionally that strategy is ineffective or would require them to drop below their comfort zone. Their home may also be saddled with the stigma of a lengthy market time which makes it difficult to attract serious prospect buyers.

In that case, I may suggest we simultaneously list their home for sale and for rent with the goal of boosting the odds of cutting their carrying expenses. Renting gives a seller the opportunity to cover some or all of their cash flow while waiting until the market for their home improves.

Before listing a home for rent, I always ask my sellers if they are prepared to lease it out for more than one year. I suggest they consider a three to five year time horizon. It is not uncommon to have to repaint or refinish floors after tenants move out, and the costs can outweigh the benefits if the term of the rental is too short. I also suggest that we time our lease so that it ends just as the market is picking up. In Chicago, the first quarter has historically been our most active selling season over the years. In an ideal world, I would love to see my leases end on the last day of December, followed by a couple of weeks of clean-up and possibly staging, and then listing no later than mid-January. That would be an ideal transition.

So, no matter what side of the market someone is on, the rent vs. buy argument can still be an important one.

I was recently asked what my favorite properties have been among the hundreds I have sold over the course of my residential real estate sales career. It was an intriguing question, and I was still thinking about it as I put my kids to bed that night.

First, however, I had to ask myself, “Just how many homes have I sold?” Was it hundreds? Thousands? Just for kicks, I checked.

Since I received my real estate license in 1994, I have sold 792 properties including 589 “attached” properties (condos, coops, lofts, and townhomes) and 192 single-family homes. In 63% of my sales, I represented the seller, and the buyer was my client for the other 37%. There were a small number of sales where I was a dual agent representing both sides in the same transaction. My average sale price to date is $771,574 which is quite high considering that when I started my career in the 1990s, prices were considerably lower than in recent years. To date, I have sold $612 million worth of homes.

But which of these 792 had been my favorites? I had to sit down and scan the pages of homes sold, remembering each one as I read down the list. Looking at the properties, I recalled each of my past clients - the persons or families who had sold or bought these homes. As I started to narrow my list, I realized that my favorite homes were the ones that best reflected the spirit of their owners.

Here are some that rank high on my list.

Ultra Cool

After just two years in the business, I had the opportunity to list 2124 W. Grand, a very unique property in Ukrainian Village which was at that time pretty gritty. A former automotive repair shop, this bland, industrial-looking 50 x 125 foot building had been transformed inside by architect Anthony Moss into a sleek, sun-filled 5,000+ square foot home with an attached 2,000 square foot 3-car garage. Featured in a Chicago Tribune Magazine story by Victoria Lautman, this cool, loft-like oasis included a 40-foot long industrial skylight, huge tropical plants, and a waterfall. My client was a prominent designer, and it fit with his clean, clutter-free aesthetic. It took me 298 days to sell (an eternity in that market), but it was so much fun. I loved seeing people’s reactions as they stepped inside.

A Home with a Soul

In 2004, I met a couple about my age over the Internet. They were relocating to Chicago from Mill Valley, California as a part of his career path at Citadel. We connected immediately, and I showed them everything that seemed to fit their criteria. They were looking for a sophisticated yet comfortable home that would be suitable for entertaining, for their two dogs, and for their hobbies which included woodworking (his), gardening (hers), and wine collecting (theirs). It quickly became clear that the only way to get exactly what they wanted was to build, and they were already enamored with the craftsmanship offered by one of the city’s top builders, Melrose Partners. We put the deal together and 18 months later, my clients moved into their dream home at 1724 N. Dayton (brochure).

I had the pleasure of attending several dinner parties in their home, and with each visit, it was exciting to see how they had made this home their own. Among other things, she had exquisite taste, cultivated beautiful gardens and was an extraordinary cook.

I was sad when they called one day to let me know they were moving to a ranch in Montana, but I was not surprised when their home sold quickly with multiple offers. This was not just a house; it was a home with a soul.

Pre-War Reinterpreted

I am a big fan of Chicago’s pre-war architecture. Many of the buildings constructed in the 1920s are exceptional. When I got a call to list an 8,000-square foot cooperative apartment at 2450 N. Lakeview, I was excited. With only eleven homes in that building and minimal turnover, it was a rare opportunity to step inside. My client and her late husband had engaged Chicago interior designers Marvin Herman and Bruce Gregga to complete a spare-no-expense renovation, and it was spectacular. The photos speak for themselves.

A Secret Garden

Last year, I met a couple who were contemplating a move. We photographed their Lincoln Park home and prepared all the marketing materials in anticipation of listing in the immediate future. In the meantime, their plans changed, and they decided to build a new home - a process that would take a couple years. I sold them a large lot in the neighborhood and we deferred our plans to list until they finished constructing their new home. When the time comes, I know their home will go fast!

When I first arrived at this home, I stood before the heavy front gate. I could not see over the massive masonry wall, and I started to wonder what I was getting myself into. What I found on the other side of the wall was a complete surprise… it was a magical garden completely out of context for a city home. My clients love their outdoor space and it showed. Features included a child-proof fountain, a corner sandbox, and a romantic terrace for outdoor dining with a vine-covered pergola.

Perfection

I am one of the listing agents for 1524 N. Astor (brochure), an exquisite Gold Coast single-family home offering unobstructed east views of historic Astor Street, and north views of the Cardinal’s mansion and Lincoln Park. This Art Deco-inspired residence is currently on the market for $9,995,000. Built for an empty nester couple, this is the most finely finished home I have seen ever. Every detail is perfect. Highlights include elegant metalwork, state-of-the-art Smart wiring, luxurious fabrics, antique and imported lighting, three outdoor venues, and a one-of-a-kind natural stone countertop on the kitchen island that is filled with large natural fossils.

The master bath at 1845 N. Orchard

I was interviewed recently by Chicago Agent magazine for their cover story on Chicago’s luxury residential real estate market. The piece discussed some interesting trends such as a shift towards smaller homes, younger buyers, and the demand for quality outdoor space.

The most significant shift I see among today’s luxury buyers is that they are looking for quality, not just a laundry list of expensive stuff dropped into a gigantic space. They expect their homes to be thoughtfully designed, meticulously constructed, and comprised of high quality (but not necessarily flashy) finishes. In terms of style, affluent buyers are embracing both traditional and contemporary finishes, provided they are well executed. Key “ingredients” include amenities that make people’s lives easier and more comfortable: smart home technology; functional, kid-friendly combination kitchen / family rooms; soothing, spa-like baths; elevators; plenty of storage; inviting outdoor space; snow melt systems; and parking for at least a couple of cars. There is also a keen interest in living on wider lots, a pushback against Chicago’s standard which is just 25 feet in width, lot line-to-lot line.

Given that there are fewer buyers in the market today, there is more pressure than ever for builders (and home renovators) to have a keen grasp of buyers’ needs and desires. Every once in a while, we are called to list a completed property where the builder completely missed the mark on this point. If the design and/or finishes in a home are “off,” the home is much harder to sell, and it may ultimately go for a lot less than expected - sometimes less than the builder’s investment. The better developers understand this and do their research before undertaking a new project. My real estate sales team and I prefer to get involved as early as possible so that we can offer input on everything from the floor plan to the selection of cabinets, appliances, light fixtures, paint colors, etc. Given that we sell 75+ properties a year with an average sale price in excess of $1 million, we are uniquely qualified to provide insight into what is and isn’t in demand.

Environs Development’s 1807 Honore

We offer the same consultative services for our clients who are selling their homes. While most people don’t renovate to sell, small improvements can yield big results. Conversely, buyers will discount the value of a home (and the price they are willing to pay) by the cost of what they believe needs to be done, and the discount is rarely dollar for dollar. One colleague of mine suggested that buyers will discount their offer by up to four times the actual cost of anticipated repairs/improvements - a pretty stiff penalty for not replacing that black toilet or taking down your once-favorite wallpaper.

If you’re thinking about buying or selling or are just plain curious about the luxury market, the Chicago Agent piece is worth a read.

There are some truly great landmark residential streets scattered throughout Chicago. Streets like Astor, Deming, Hawthorne and Hutchinson on the city’s north side and Prairie and Kenwood Avenues as you travel south. These streets are populated by magnificent historic homes often set on huge suburban-sized lots. Homes from this era are unique for the simple fact that the skilled trades that went into their construction have all but died out today. These gems rarely come on the market, but when they do, everyone takes notice.

Case in point: the home I recently sold at 526 W. Deming. This eight bedroom house was built in the early 1900s for Chicago’s Imperial Russian Vice Consul. It is loaded with priceless hand-crafted architectural details including leaded and stained glass windows, hand-carved paneling, mantles, a grand staircase, and numerous fireplaces surrounded by handmade mosaic tiles. It is also set on a massive city lot with a four-car garage and a two bedroom garden apartment. (You can see the full details in our PDF brochure here).

In preparing to list this home for sale, I dug into historical archives (including those of the now defunct Chicago Daily News) to learn more about its history. What I found was a goldmine of drama and intrigue. The wife of the couple who built the house was from a prominent Chicago family. Her husband was a Russian Prince with a fancy title but no money. After years of marriage, she asked for a divorce in light of her husband’s extramarital relations. He said it was a matter for the Czar to decide, and she took it to the Supreme Court which granted the divorce! He went on to marry another wealthy socialite, and the tale continued. Their storied history and the home itself was featured last week in a Sun Times article and in a video news story on their website. (You can view both pieces here).

It was a pleasure to market this home. My client (the seller) had made a significant investment in its restoration and it showed beautifully. By the time I put the home on the market, it offered a level of comfort even a Russian prince would not have known. As the Sun Times noted of the home, “today it shines like a new penny.”

After receiving multiple offers, the home went under contract in less than 30 days for a price in excess of $4 million - a very pretty penny indeed!

keep looking »

Jennifer Ames

(312) 440-7525

jenny@jenniferames.com

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