What to do on Super Sunday before the Game - See an Open House
Hooray for Hollywood!
And as the age-old musical backdrop fades, raise the curtain of my elegant new listing at 4353 W Hollywood in Chicago’s Sauganash neighborhood.
This four-bedroom, four full and one half bath home was built under the watchful and expert eye of Vince Cordos. Heading up his group, Cordos Construction, and just off his well-regarded re-do of the Morse Street Theater, Vince typically shoulders the construction projects of some of Chicago’s most well-connected folks.
With the proof being in the pudding, so to speak, train your eye on the photos provided below in the SlideShare of a powerpoint presentation for this residence. Just a few notes…
The home resonates with quality. The finish carpentry manifests in the form of opulent crown molding and ceiling coving. The kitchen is simply superb with commercial grade appliances and cabinetry design by EuroDesign. Each of the home’s baths is five star luxury quality in design and realization. Hardwood flooring extends throughout as does a whole-home audio-visual system with wall-mounted controls. The area between the rear of the home and the solid, all-brick two-car garage is a cobbled patio with a built-in bbq.
And yet seeing is believing… So either contact Thomas McCarey of The Real Estate Lounge Chicago with @properties to arrange a private showing of this Chicago luxury single family. Or join me today before the Super Bowl at my open house between noon-2p.
Aggressive Steps to Market Homes (and Reclaim Diamond Rings)
Under the Category of How Did That Happen?
Listening to Newsradio78 after meeting with a prospective condo listing Saturday afternoon I heard a story about a woman from California lost her engagement ring down a toilet in a Phoenix restaurant. The fact that her beau had dropped $78k on the 7k diamond ring prompted some serious hand-wringing and head scratching as remedies were considered.
First they got the bad news from a local plumber who declared that the ring was lost.
Then workers from the city water department set in motion a non-stop flushing campaign to see if they could spring the ring into a pipe down the line. But no go. And once again, situation declared hopeless.
Finally, the couple called the man who would be the saviour of the ring, Mike Roberts of Mr. Rooter. Like his plumbing brethren who preceded him, Roberts held out little hope of finding the diamond in the rough. And yet he set up his equipment - a video camera with an infrared light attached to a 125-foot rod to search the pipe - and explored the pipes.
And after several hours his efforts paid off and he detected the brilliant stone. Another 90 minutes of drilling, jackhammering, and pipe punching had the ring in hand, rinsed, and back on the unadorned ring finger of the bride-to-be.
It brings to my mind the script from Mastercard:
- 7 karat diamond engagement ring - $78,000
- Mr. Rooter - $5,200
- City Water Department - $1,000
- Return of the bling - Priceless
And the point of all of this? Just a clever anecdote. But there is an application to Chicago real estate.
How? Think about it this way. A Eureka, California couple made a major investment. The investment lost its value (literally it went down the drain). Instead of standing idly on the sidelines they aggressively sought a means of remedying their situation. When it comes to the housing market this can mean updating a kitchen, painting before listing, regrouting and caulking the bath, or any number of things.
With respect to the two homes that I will host as open houses today, it plays out as follows…
At my newly built home in Sauganash at 4353 W Hollywood, a delightful residence by Cordos Construction, it means that the home has been staged. This helps tremendously as now it is not an empty home but a well furnished dwelling. I will be there from 11a-1p.
At my two-year-old resale at 1055 N Hermitage where I will be from 2p-4p it means that my clients have positioned their home to look the best that it can to prospective lookers. And it does. This East Village two bed penthouse with a fully decked private rooftop veritably shines.
In both instances my clients have not stood idly on the sidelines. Instead they have aggressively taken steps to best represent their awesome Chicago real estate to sell to the next consumer who walks in. That’s why they selected me.
And perhaps it will be you who walks in and takes the next step toward claiming your part of the American dream.
Feel free to call me with any questions - 773.848.9241.
Buying a home is STILL part of the American Dream
We all live walking along the edge of our dreams. The question is whether we choose to walk headlong into what we dream, to make it real.
Late it is as I write this. Working late as the boys fell asleep hours ago after a boys night in. No better place to be on the northside of Chicago than nestled in the comfort of our warm Edgewater home with my beautiful sons as their lovely mother and my delightful wife snatched a few hours to catch up with old friends. So we, Jackson, Lucas and I, spent the evening eating popcorn and watching the movie “Ice Age.”
After the movie and reading “Olivia” and Curious George we drifted at the edge of sleep. Actually Lucas succumbed a bit earlier, somewhere between Olivia and George. Jackson, tip-toeing gingerly at the edge of slumber, then sleepily recounted things that had happened earlier today at school.
The sweetest conversations with our three-year-old happen at sleep’s edge. The softness of what he tells cannot be described, nor can I tell you how when he says what he says I want to sweep him up and hold him fiercely. I want to protect him from bumps, to prevent scrapes, to make sure that everyone who meets him loves him madly and fully as I and my wife do.
This is the nature of love, I suppose. And this is the unimaginable and transcendent effect that kids have on us.
At any rate, here is it is, just shy of 3am on a school night. What am I doing?
I stumbled upon the movie “Once.”
Good movies, you can tell in a moment. Whether it’s the dialog or the tint of the film’s color or the way the movie fills the screen. Whatever it is, you can tell. And so it was just after 1am (when most sane people had already retired) that this movie happened to be on a channel that I clicked. And they happened to be singing the movie’s title song (which I think won an Oscar). And so I happened to do the ridiculous thing of getting snared and staying snared as I chose to multitask en route to now.
And here it is closer to the time that I wake than I care to admit and I am telling you about it.
I started this brief post saying something about dreams. For many of us owning a home is a dream. A little bit of the American dream, some would say. It’s still happening, you know. Owning a home. Buying a home.
Maybe not at the prodigious clip that was the case a few years back. But it’s still happening. And it happens every day in the Chicago real estate market. And when it happens there are a couple of simple ingredients in place that we at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago find to be in place - a home is found that someone loves - that someone has a nest egg in place to make a down payment - that someone is able to get a loan in order to buy.
At it’s essence the process is amazingly straightforward. But sometimes we muck things up. Right now I would say most of the muck factor is rooted in fear. But here’s the thing - at some point we have to shake it off and move forward and unshackle ourselves from the fear.
Maybe it’s time to start walking headlong into our dreams. Or maybe it’s time to rest our heads and listen to the dulcet tones of our children and let them urge us to our fuller selves.
New Luxury Condo Listing in Chicago
Two things…
Earlier today as I kicked the can of augmenting my social marketing campaign I stumbled across a neat little tool called SlideShare. What it allows you to do is create a power point presentation that, when you upload to SlideShare, syndicates to your LinkedIn profile and can be 1) viewed by those who habituate this milieu and 2) can be shared and embedded to crawl around and about the web.
The upshot of this is more news is good news. The nature of marketing is that the more eyes that see it and the more minds that noodle over it, the better the prospect of selling.
The guinea pig property for this new marketing experiment is 1055 N Hermitage, a wonderful luxury condo that is listed at $499,900 by Thomas McCarey and The Real Estate Lounge Chicago with @properties. With two bedrooms and two baths, this residence features a fully decked rooftop, impeccable finishes in the island kitchen and both baths, 12-foot ceilings, stereo wiring and speakers in LR, MBR and the rooftop. Plus the list price includes a garage space.
If a virtual glimpse of this stunning property that is just steps from everything great on Division Street and close to public transit sparks your affection, stop by this Sunday and meet me at my open house from 2p-4p.
Good Morning, America!!
It’s a good morning in America.
We woke as a family unit and moved in many different directions until the pancakes were griddle-cooked and ready. Then the boys and my lovely wife came together at the dining room table to eat a hot breakfast courtesy of dad.
As wonderful as the pancakes were, the truest part of the morning ritual is my coffee.
And with perhaps the city’s best beanery just down the street, Metropolis, it’s easy to have coffee that constitutes a meal in and of itself. Certainly a pleasure to have such a brew to augment the pancakes.
As we expressed gratitude for the meal, for our home, for a heated home, for such a vibrant place to live, and for a country such as this my wife and I decided that today Jackson would skip school to watch the inauguration. A perfect bookend to our attendance of election-night activities in Grant Park.
But first we had to drive down to the listing of The Real Estate Lounge Chicago and Thomas McCarey located at 550 Surf for its appraisal. Timing was a bit of a glitch, but with this hurdle cleared we dashed home to take in this wonderful moment.
Which is where we are now.
Nicole’s friend Clifton, a resident of the greater Dallas community, just texted a picture of what it’s like on the mall in DC.
There with his wife and daughter and mother, he said it’s “amazing” and the operative sentiment is “friendly.”
Amen!
That’s what it looks like from our warm and comfy perch here in Edgewater as Barack Obama readies to take his oath.
So let us gather and celebrate. And let us with faith and determination move forward.
I think we are all ready.
