Single Family Homes
Peeking at Spring in Chicago with Tom McCarey (and Trusted Resources)
As I selected the outfits my sons would don today I mused back to the tail-end of my childhood when “Garanimals” were introduced.
Garanimals, for those not in the know, was and is a children’s clothing line providing tops and bottoms each emblazoned with animal tags designed to make matching little one’s outfits a bit easier. [...]
By All Means a Bio - This is a Snap Shot of Being Tom McCarey
The first week has come and gone and I am glad to be a part of the @properties’ brokerage. Something about making a move that gets my blood moving and makes me feel a little bit more alive. It also grants me a wonderful chance to take a little of this and ditch a little [...]
Change Becomes Me - Joining Chicago’s @properties Real Estate Brokerage
Change.
It comes in a pile of coins.
Or it’s expressed on the calendar four times a year with the shifting of the seasons.
Or it happens at odd, possibly unexpected times in one’s professional life.
Kind of like an old school coffee percolator, the idea of a change was brewing for me a bit before the change came [...]
Hope Defines Me - Meeting Barack on a Sunday Afternoon
Lucas turned one last week. And the change is colossal.
He always was a bright child - but now I will wake in the morning to find him transliterating speeches of the aspiring presidential candidates into both Latin and Greek. Nonplussed by criticism of some naysayers that these so-called “dead” languages are pointless, Lucas laughs and utters [...]
A Five Hour Home Inspection and How a Promiscuous Buyer Made a Commitment
Thursday evening at 6.30 I headed home from one of my recently sold listings. I had just turned over five hours of my life to the longest home inspection I have ever endured.
If you haven’t participated in a home inspection lately (or ever), the point of this enterprise is to provide the home buyer with [...]
The Rumored Demise - Another Home Sells in Chicago
The Chicago real estate market today? I can’t help but think of Mark Twain’s quote, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Yesterday my clients finalized negotiations of an offer for their home in West Town. Listed in the upper six figures, this residence attracted the prospective buyers back for three showings before they made [...]
Single Digits - A Chicago Salute
Two-thirds of the way through February and here in Chicago we seem no closer to the end of the season.
Just two weeks ago the furry critter made famous in Bill Murray’s movie “Groundhog Day” popped out his hole, saw his shadow, and thereby inflicted upon us an additional six weeks of winter.
Oh Punxsutawney Phil , [...]
A New Way of Looking at Things (with New Pair of Glasses, that is)
I can’t remember the first time I walked in the little optical shop on Broadway near Belmont.
I had popped into the eye glass place across the street but they didn’t have what I wanted. But with unrequested kindness and unexpected candor the clerk nodded to the shop across the way and said I might find [...]
Places to Insert One Thin Dime
There are any number of places where you might insert one thin dime. But one place I hadn’t considered is a gap in a hardwood floor.
Earlier today I met at one of my under contract new construction listings to meet with the buyer’s agent and my seller’s flooring guy before he started stripping and staining [...]
Baby it’s Cold Outside - Ready for the Chicago Winter to End
Cold? Yep.
It’s that time in the Chicago winter when the allure of snow has faded and been replaced by a simmering discontentedness.
As the mercury vacillated in the past several days above and below freezing, finally settling on the negative side of the freezing level, what we have here in Chicago is a mass of rigid [...]
