open eyes . open house . 2035 charleston . bucktown loft
Gray, it is today, as the mercury urges itself beyond freeze point. Rain drops danced through the night and convinced what little snow remained to dissipate and evacuate. And so the roadways shimmer and the ground is cushioned by puddles and pools.
Busy, it is as well. Since the new year the business of Chicago real estate has been downright vibrant. The phone buzzes and emails come in and the docket is relatively full.
Showings. Contracts. Inspections. Walk-throughs. For all variety of Chicago real estate.
Oh, and listings. The team at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago is chock full of listings.
One such listing is the type of loft I envision in New York. And yet it is here in Chicago in Bucktown. Situated in the Manchester Lofts at 2035 w charleston, unit 303 is a soaring dwelling with windows the size of cars, filling the home’s soaring space with ample natural light even on a day gray as this.
I will be here today from noon until 2p, amid the timber pillars and struts, standing more than six feet tall but being nowhere near the ceiling, surrounded by tasteful finishes that comprise a home of elegance and distinction.
That this Chicago home has two bedrooms and two baths is but a piece of the narrative. That it has a flowing floorplan with a great room with a distinctive fireplace, a separate dining room that urges entertaining, that the living room is sizable and commodious, that the kitchen is superbly realized in components, cabinetry and what it implies for cuisine concocting is the larger piece to consider.
And that the space is dramatically accented by exposed brick with magnificent shutters upon the bedroom windows as well as the master bath elementally adds to the symphony.
A discerning buyer may arrive today to recognize his or her new home. Perhaps it will be you?
I will show 2035 charleston . 303 from noon until 2 today. Reach me at 773.848.9241.
Where Do I Want to Go Today? Showing Chicago Listings and Beyond
Where do you want to go today?
Does this refrain sound familiar to you? It does to me, having lingered in some dusty backroad in my mind ever since it debuted as a Microsoft ad in 1994. Billed in a New York Times review as “a winsome, humanistic approach to demystifying technology” the ad may have been doomed because it was perhaps too winsome.
No matter, I love the phrasing. I love it because of the essence of hope that it implies.
Where do you want to go today?
Where do I want to go? Of course there are practical considerations of where I want to go. This morning I had to process a contract with a buying client for a Wicker Park home, show a Bucktown listing later in the morning, go to a closing for a South Loop condo in Chicago’s Loop this afternoon and run comps for a buying client thinking of making an investment purchase in Streeterville.
But where I want to go aside from the tick marks in my appointment book? Part of the answer is easy – I want to be a good father and a loving husband, to be a thoughtful member of the community who is respected as an individual and as a Chicago real estate professional, to be honored among my friends, family and clients.
But some responses to this question are a bit more difficult. A few months back my wife and I bought a condo in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. We just finished the redo of both the kitchen and the bath (which turned out ridiculously nice).
Anyway, for the first time since buying we have stayed in our new place this week. And it feels like we are on vacation (despite my full dance card with respect to appointments).
I mention this because when thinking about where I want to go the answer is intertwined with my wife and my sons and a significant part of the reply has to do with being in different locations. In other words, traveling.
Both near and far.
My good fortune is that I love representing people who buy and sell homes in the Chicago real estate market. And if you haven’t met me yet, these folks tend to think highly of me as an attorney with whom I have worked called today to refer an Old Town townhome listing and another couple I met a few weeks back contacted me this morning to see a West Lakeview single family.
In a day or two or next week or so these conversations will comprise tick marks in my appointment book that will determine in part where I want to go that day. And as I return this evening to our Lakeview condo in partial vacation mode I will bask in the glory of my family while contemplating still where yet I want to go. The great news is that the answer rests with me. It dwells in my hopes and aspirations and will, with my family, be answered.
Where do I want to go today? I will let you know. But so far I am off to a great start.
Will January Beget a Warm Spring Real Estate Market in Chicago?
So what will the Chicago’s spring real estate market bring this year?
More of the same? Or perhaps a freeing up and dislodging of pent up demand? I’d like to say that we will know more after today’s round of open houses but the deep chill, accumulated snow and slippery walkways may hinder some folks who otherwise would ambulate. So any estimation likely leans toward anecdote.
Historically January in the Chicago real estate market is the commencement of the spring home buying and selling cycle. But for what seems to me to be the last three years January has rolled out like a tire without enough air. There have been fewer and fewer transactions for less and less dinero, resulting in inventory gathering dust and buyers standing on the sidelines because their places go unsold (and selling is the basis of their home buying).
So what does this January promise for the Chicago real estate market?
With prices suppressed, demand in the pipeline, expectations honed on the part of both home buyers and sellers, and a surfeit of inventory there’s the prospect that there will be an uptick in activity. What might subvert this otherwise desirable outcome, though, is more of the same of the last 24-36 months. In other words:
- lenders that don’t (lend)
- purchases reliant on the sale of home’s that don’t (sell)
- consumer confidence that isn’t (confident).
Will we see more of the same? If the past few months are any indication, thawing should continue. Home sales have trended up the past few months although activities have been bracketed on the lower and upper ends with the ample middle gaining weeds. The key question and task becomes how to stimulate that middle where the bulk of inventory and demand rest.
So does today promise to become the harbinger of better things to come in the near and far terms?
The key rests with banks making loans to facilitate home buying
Although tax credits play a role, they serve no role when folks who make too much to qualify for them. What’s far more important is for lenders to lend. Right before the end of the year as many bankers were harrumphing and guffawing about paying down the federal bailouts they received just a year prior at least one major player was issuing edicts that it would indeed stand ready to lend come the turning of the new year.
My hope is that what Bank of America said it would do it will do and that other lenders will follow suit. Really.
As with anything, time will tell.
Several Chicago Open Houses Today
2449 W Logan is a Logan Square condo for sale or rent that is open from noon – 2p
1218 W Carmen, 5 is an Andersonville condo for sale or rent that is open from 11a – 1p
6630 N Fairfield is a Rogers Park bungalow that is open from noon – 2p
And I will host 1724 W Wolfram a Lakeview single family home from noon – 2p before meeting clients to view homes in Wicker Park and the East Village.
Add One – Chicago Return Delayed by One More Tropical Day
Pity me not as I cross my legs at a bistro table near the Cancun airport, delaying the inevitable return to my Chicago home by one more day.
And please feel not a need to mock me as I don colorful shorts that pleasantly match a momentary dash of color afforded by a weeks worth of tropical sun.
And please don’t think, should you be warming numb extremities, that I am taunting you. I am not. I am simply lumbering toward a point.
The picture below is the madhouse that was the Cancun International Airport today, the first Monday of the new year and the first non-weekend travel day since 2010 announced its arrival. Had the line to the United counter gone any more slowly it would have gone backward. And despite the slowness, moods among travelers were positive.
Even I, who truly abhors lines, waits and crowds was in an okay mood. As we finally neared our destination word came that volunteers were sought to stand down. In return to make room on the overbooked flight back to Chicago volunteers would be remunerated with flight vouchers, food stipends and overnight accommodations. Because the shiny device on which I now type enables me to work from wherever, whenever and because of my wife’s beauty and flexibility and our kids’ ability to travel well, we opted to volunteer.
And so I write to you from a hotel some 10 minutes outside of Cancun as Jackson and Lucas nap.
Taking an offer from United is a value proposition. They make an offer and it is up to the recipient, in this case me and my family, to determine if what they offer has worth to us to accept. It compares, if you allow me a degree of artistic license, to buying or selling a home in today’s market.
Across the board each and every one of my clients engaged in buying or selling a home in the Chicago real estate market are intent on getting the best possible deal. Makes sense. Nobody wants to leave money on the table no matter what side of the transaction they occupy. Nobody wants to be the target of Barnum’s maxim that a sucker is born every minute.
And so we run comps that consider recent activity noting trends three, four and six months back as we attempt to capture a snapshot of fair value. And sometimes no matter how much we analyze, how much number crunching we do, how much we edify ourselves it comes down to a moment in time when we have to decide.
Today as we stood at the desk at the Cancun International Airport it took us less than a half minute to determine that the offer from United was fair.
So we accepted.
It’s not always so easy. But, if we flip the language around, maybe it’s also not that hard.
What is hard, though, is facing the fact that the weather earlier today in Chicago was a single digit. Feel free to mock me tomorrow as I sprint from the international terminal to find our car service home wearing linen pants and a blazer without a scarf.
Meaning Sought, Gained and Possibly Explained
Walking beach side yesterday Jackson and I talked about one of our favorite water themes – “Nemo.”
Not the Nemo associated with Jules Verne, but the one associated with dvds that play in endless loops on wide screen tvs in Chicago homes and around the world after nap-time or before bedtime.
It’s the fish, man.
And as we talked of Nemo and this place where he lives and how important it is to put trash in its proper place lest we impinge on his home and possibly harm him I drifted my hands through the water feeling the water sift between my finger and wedding band and thought how sad it would be if my ring were to somehow loosen and drop from my hand and plop in the froth and nestle into the sand below.
And then it would be gone, man.
And then I did what I often do, I transposed the letters of the word I was thinking of and suddenly Nemo became omen. Then my brain raced from point to point thinking if the water were to shrink my finger and if the water were to coerce the ring to fall and if the ring went missing would all of this add up to be an omen? And if so, what would the omen be.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, And so, too, is meaning.
If any of this were to happen (and none of it did), would there be some deeper meaning, something Jungian about it all. Or would it simply be an occurrence? An event among many events that stitch together the patchwork quilt of life.
Of course all of this purely subjective, based on personal experience and possibly even more so by faith of the hope of something better. As this second day of the new year watches the second hand spin I think of the facebook updates and twitter tweets I have witnessed the past few days that espouse momentary reflections on what to do and how to do it.
In other word, resolutions.
As I mused over my walk with Jackson, my twisting of semantics, new year’s resolutions and the sense of hope that the new year inspires I thought of Victor Frankl and his seminal book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” A powerful quote from this autobiography of his surviving the darkest of pains and sufferering in a Nazi concentration camp embodies something that might serve as a profound daily mantra:
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by lifeĀ ā€“ daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
And so with my ring still firmly affixed to my finger and the a repository of various thoughts that danced within my noggin during and after a beach side walk I find a truer and higher inspiration as the new year rests before me like a tablet to be written upon by my pen in my handwriting.
Yesterday was happy new year. Today being the second, happy two year.
And so it goes.
