Where else can you get a brand new 3,000 sq ft dream house for $243,000? Oswego! This would cost $500,000 in Naperville or Wheaton.

Finding New Homes for Sale has been more difficult than I thought.  We never thought we would be looking in Elgin, Oswego, Wauconda or Huntley, IL but we are.

We have been looking for a house to buy for the last 6 months and we haven’t found anything we like that we can afford in Naperville or Wheaton or Glen Ellyn. We have been looking at used homes because these areas of the Chicago Suburbs have all the land already built up.

It turns out that the only places you can find open land in the Chicago area to build a new home on, is the fringe of the suburbs. Some places with new developments that are really affordable we have found are from Town and Country Homes  (sign up for the open house at the link and get a $50 gift card for your time) in  Elgin, Huntley, Oswego and Wauconda.

The plusses of buying a house in Elgin or Oswego are that these are all new homes and you get choices about how you want your home built, what kind of lot you want and what details and finishes you have in your new home. They have luxury finishes and all the open floorplans, custom kitchens and square footage you might want with a growing family.

I have been looking at used homes for 6 months and I can honestly say that there is no choice and no good homes left on the market after the bubble burst sell-off.  Everything we have seen either is on a corner lot (no privacy in the back yard), has wood paneling (glued to wallboard, very hard to remove) or has no basement or is missing some other crucial qualifier for us.

We would like to build our own home and have to start looking out further west than Naperville and Wheaton. The things we would like in a new home would be a large kitchen/family room combo a large dining room for holidays and family events and a nice size master bedroom with good closet space.

We’re also a fan of white woodwork and white kitchens of which you can’t find inNaperville because it was mostly built up in the 1980′s when all oak all the time was popular.

The only negative to living in Elgin or Oswego is that not everyone works out there. Many of us work downtown or in other near-city suburbs and these towns are a long drive from work every day. Sometimes you can catch a Metra train like from Elgin but Oswego people have to go to Aurora to catch one.

We are pretty much ready to consider the long commute to save $150,000 on the price of a home and have a smaller mortgage to worry about. Plus we would get to choose more options on our home ourselves. It sounds like an extra 15-20 minute commute can get you a lot larger home that you are happy with for a very long time. The federal tax credit that goes until April 1 will also be helpful., G

Aaaaahhhhh!!!! Runs screaming from the open house...

Even though we are still feeling the affect of the recession, Chicago open houses are on my calendar this weekend. My husband and I have decided that its time to find a house to settle down in and move from our small 2 br townhouse. We spend a lot of evenings searching through hundreds of real estate listings in the Chicago area to find a diamond in the rough. (and there is a lot of rough!) We probably look at more homes online than most people because the area we are searching to buy in is pretty large. (most of the western suburbs) We also end up rejecting a lot of homes for a lot of reasons that are probably pretty common in this economy.

Something’s gotta give though, and the economy isn’t going  to move forward until all of the people like us (with a 20% down payment ready to go) are able to get past at least one of these barriers and buy a house sometime soon. If you are trying to sell your home these things we’re running up against may provide some insight into why your home isn’t selling yet.

1. Not close enough to the METRA train. Parking is notoriously difficult to get in most west suburban metra stations (like 7 year waiting list long) so a lot of pressure is put on the homes within walking distance to the train, and not just the tracks, the station itself. Homes with 4 bedrooms or more within 6 blocks of the Naperville train station go for $600,000 to $1.5 million. Sometimes I wonder why we even try to find a house in these areas… What is less than that is usually painfully small, painfully out of date or demolished or earmarked for demolition so a McMansion can be built for some rich executive that needs to travel downtown every day.

If we only had the skills of these guys...

2. Kitchens/Baths not recently updated and we’re not Bob Vila or Norm Abrams. (we wish we were though) We can update some things, but a full house rehab is not our cup of tea. We’re going on 2 months on a simple Vanity/Paint/Sink bathroom remodel at home now. We also aren’t Richy-Rich enough to afford someone else doing the renovation either. I think if one room needs an overhaul that is ok, if the entire house needs it, the house gets rejected. (about 90% of what I see online is in this category)  Everyone knows that once you have kids you won’t ever have any money to renovate again, so it’s either included when you buy the house or it never happens and you have a lifetime of relatives trying to politely avoid Christmas Eve invitations. This is why there is so much pressure to get a recently updated house. Just watch HGTV’s suite of 12 million shows on how to quickly and cheaply update and stage a home to sell. They’re actually very good at it. Just don’t believe how fast its done in. That part is not true. (and a test: if your kitchen cabinets have hinges on the outside of the door that are visible OR have an oak strip across the bottom of a white laminate cabinet door, you need to get them replaced or refaced before selling. And Advice: all wood tones go out of style within a few years, get white instead! Likewise, if you have flourescent tube lights in the celing with a fake window pane cover, they need to go now!)

3. Pre-Recession home pricing. I have switched from using Realtor.com’s site listings to using Redfin.com. There you can see the past sale history of the home you are looking at if it is publicly available. (it usually is if its been sold within the last 15 years) If we see that the home was purchased at the top of the real estate bubble in 2006-2007 and they want the same price for it now, no-way-Jose. The entire Chicagoland metropolitan area has declined in value about 20% from then and the people who price accordingly are the ones selling. If your home is not updated, take off the mandatory 20% plus the cost of renovating the rooms that need it. I had to sell my condo at 20% less than the value, how can I go pay a premium for someone else’s home?

The holy grail of kitchens, celing height cabinets, lots of storage, an island and white cabinets!!!

4. Its already contingent on a sale. You would be surprised how fast a home sells if it’s had the kitchens/baths recently updated (within the last 10 years)  and its price is about 20% lower than the peak. Maybe a week and its sold. So if your goal is to move out of town and loose that mortgage payment to start your new job and life somewhere else, this is how to do it. And by recently updated we don’t mean super fancy, just nice basic stuff is way better than a 1972 kitchen. (and there are surprisingly still thousands of 1972, 1961 and 1985 kitchens out there. It’s been a trend lately that as soon as we find a house that has dropped the price with the market and it looks like its in good working shape, it’s contingent. One loophole we are hopeful about is possibly finding Foreclosed Homes or Short Sales. We know some are in bad shape, but a lot of the homes being foreclosed on are recently renovated or built when the bubble was high and are still in nice shape. One thing that makes this difficult is the length of time it takes to close with the bank that owns them.

5. Near water and/or has a pool. (hot tubs are not great either, and why on earth do you have a professional Bowling Alley in your basement of a 4 bedroom ranch?) I am not a swimmer so pools, lakes, rivers, retention ponds, hot tubs and bowling alley’s scare me. Ok not the last one. I just don’t have extra cash to maintain these water works (waterfalls in the backyard are also a bad idea, difficult to maintain) so remove them if possible. Plus, who wants to sit in a Hot Tub where the last owners got-it-on anyway???

6. Sometimes the home has been discounted but the Property Taxes are still too high. This is difficult because some homes are discounted heavily and the taxes are almost as much as the mortgage payment from 2007 levels. No county or town is going to lower them without a serious fight either. They are short on budgets and cash also. So, these usually are excluded too. If you can re-negotiate your property taxes before you sell this will be a huge help to getting it sold faster.

So, I will not be spending my weekend frolicking in the leaves at Morton Arboretum where I would like to be. It is very likely we will be walking through open homes for sale and trying to find one that is affordable, nice and in a good location, but judging from the last month or so it may be a while…

Spring is the time that most people look for an apartment in Chicago. Rental Leases are up and it is the first time for the year that it is warm enough that you can actually move furniture our of one apartment and into a new apartment without freezing. April-June are the high points for most apartment rental searches so that means most people start looking in February, March and April in order to see enough places to make a decision on which lease to sign and where to move to in Chicago by May or June.

There are many ways to start your search for a new apartment in Chicago. If you are moving here from out of town most people find that making an appointment with an apartment rentals listing/finder service is an efficient way to see a lot of apartments over one or two weekends (with a guide) that they visit and then they can make their decisions within a few weeks. This way of searching for a new apartment in Chicago has a higher price though because there is always a finder’s fee involved in the cost of the apartment.

Lots of vintage buildings have apartments available that have charm and character you won't find in new apartment rentals.

Other people prefer to go it alone looking at craigslist or other apartment rentals listing sites (like apartments.com) for individual apartment listings and see the units on their own time schedule. This is more convenient if you already live in the neighborhood and generally you find better deals this way,but it may take 2-3 months to find the right apartment unit. Craigslist has many search options and ways to filter the search results and RSS feeds so you only see what you can afford and most listings have some photos that help you weed out the seedy/gross places. 

A lot of people consider the night life and amenities in a particular Chicago neighborhood to be a large part of their decision on where to find an apartment. Getting around in Chicago with 9.5 million other people isn’t easy, so being as close to work, friends and convenient places to hang out is definitely an asset. The problem is that the places closest to downtown are the most expensive and the places closest to a lot of bars and trendy hangouts in Lincoln Park and Lakeview are also in high demand and therefore cost a lot also.

A typical 1 bedroom apartment floorplan in Chicago

Sometimes you can find better prices on rent for apartments further north in the city like Buena Park, Uptown and Lincoln Square. These neighborhoods have a longer commute if you work downtown, but you can save $200-$300 per month on your rent. Another option may be to rent a condo that someone can’t sell in this bad real estate economy. Many condo owners who have moved or gotten married just want to recoup some of the cash they are paying in monthly mortgage payments so they are usually very negotiable on rental prices. You also get someones home that was probably taken care of much better than a rental unit. A lot of newly rehabbed condos with luxury details are available for rent from individual owners listed on craigslist or other classified sites.  

How much does it cost to rent an apartment in Chicago?

I know people in Lakeview/Lincoln park that pay $750 per month for a 500 sq ft studio apartment without parking, and the price goes up from there. A 1 bedroom might be around $1,200 per month and a 2 bedroom might be around $1,800 especially if you want parking. Extra parking rental spaces can run from $150 – $300 per month depending on where it is located and if it is a garage or not.

A modern apartment that would be typical in Lakeview or Wicker Park neighborhoods in Chicago.

If you go further north the prices drop a few hundred dollars per unit. Also, Oak Park is a convenient alternative where a 1 bedroom might only be $850 per month and the parking is free. Oak Park apartments are still walking distance to the el for commuting to work downtown every day and the suburb is right next to the city so you can enjoy all the nightlife. Other people have found Evanston to be an alternative to living in Chicago and paying high apartment rentals prices. Evanston prices are very comparable to Oak Park and the buildings there are very similar also. The only difference is which train line you take to work. The Purple line instead of the Green line.  

Even cheaper apartment rent yet is available the south side of the city or some of the near west neighborhoods like Humboldt Park in Chicago.These neighborhoods may have lower rent rates for a reason though and it is always important to feel safe in the area that you decide to rent an apartment and live for a few years. Checking the crime reports through the local newspapers online is a good way to assess the situation and decide. 

How much of your income should you spend on rent each month?

A typical starter apartment where someone brings their bikes in because in Chicago cutting the locks & stealing bikes is all too common.

I think the guide to getting approved for a lease is around 25-30% of your monthly after tax income.Don’t forget you have to figure in the cost of utilities, parking, food and transportation also each month on top of rent. Some apartments come with heat or water included in the rent price, but not all of them do. If you find one that does, it is rare. The cost of food and utilities is about 25% more in the city than in the suburbs also. Finding roommates can help share the costs of rent but finding someone you can live with and share a bathroom with can be a serious challenge.

Wherever you decide to live in Chicago I hope this information helps you find the best deal on cheap apartment rent while finding a place you really like to live in. After you find your new apartment that you love you may want to check out whitefence.com for finding the cheapest utilities in your area also.

The city of Chicago is shocked and saddened right now by the news that the Sears Tower is going to be renamed the Willis Tower for the new company renting/leasing the major quantity of office space there. The Willis Group is from London and they plan on leasing 140,000 sq feet of space according to Crain’s Chicago Business.

The building at 233 S Wacker Drive in Chicago IL, 60606 may have a new name and signs soon but the people of Chicago will take a while to stop calling it the Sears Tower and going to the Sears Tower Skydeck. (How many years has it been and I still call Macy’s Marshall Fields?) 

The traditional Chicago Skyline Shot with the iconic Sears Tower now the Willis Tower.

I don’t think Chicagoans have a particular affinity to the Sears company, (judging by how poorly Sears has done in this market in the past 10 years) I just think they knew the Sears Tower building as an icon and point of pride for a city that was second or third place for everything else. 

The Architecture Firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill designed and built the building over 3 years for SEARS which was the largest retailer in the world then. From 1970-1973 the city watched and waited as this new modern design changed the way the world saw Chicago.

The image and pride was somewhat lessened when the Sears Tower was no longer the tallest building in the world and now with the name change it seems like it might eventually just be destined to become another tall building in a world of metropolises.

This also lessens the novelty of the Chicago Olympic Bid. Seriously, what did we ever offer the Olympics anyway?

The Sears Tower was sold from SEARS to AEW Holdings in 1995 and since 2001 the building has been low on tenants and had a lot of space available. I understand that the owners need to sell space and if changing the name gets them a better sq footage rate and closes the deal, we really don’t have any say about it.

In this recession economy the companies and the people in Chicago are really just trying to get by. Live and work smarter, more efficiently and see if we can survive this mess. We really can’t be too worried about iconography of any kind right now. We’re really in much more of a practical mood right now.

I hope the insurance brokers at the Willis Group understand that you can change all the signage quickly but it’s just going to be a long time before most people refer to your building as the Willis Tower rather than the Sears Tower. After all Marshall Fields still got searches on Google for years after it was folded into Macy’s.

Image Credits to Flickr.com wallyg and paulmcdee and glenharper and celkins. Seeing their photos reminds me of how many people see that building every day and how visible is it from every part of the city. I am also so impressed by the quality of photos on flickr of the Sears Tower from all over town.

I just read on Chicago Breaking News Blog that the Cook County Assessor’s office is issuing 9.8 Million dollars in property tax refunds to 8,500 home owners in the next few weeks of 2008. Will I be one of the lucky few?

I am not holding my breath, this happens about once a year as estimations and real dollar amounts don’t always match up and I have never been on the receiving end of a refund check from Cook County in 8 years of owning a condo there. If you can’t wait to know if you will be getting an average amount (it’s never distributed that way) of $1,140 back in a property tax refund you can go look online at the Cook County Assessor’s office web site.  

Go to the link on the upper right hand side of the page for refunds and enter your tax-id number (nobody has that at work though) and see if you won the lottery, er, refunds. Property taxes are high in Cook County and even higher in areas like Oak Park where the municipality adds on a ton of extra high taxes too.  It is nice though that when they find an accounting error like this they actually give the money back to the tax-paying public in a tax refund check. It almost restores my hope of honesty in Chicago government a little tiny bit.

Have you ever needed a zip code to find out an address or mail a letter to someone and needed their zip code? I run into this problem a lot so here are the zip codes I have been able to compile from a few different places on the web. There are Chicago neighborhood zip codes from the north, south and west side of the city and some near Chicago suburban zip codes too. The zip codes are all listed aphabetically for easy reference. Hopefully this list will be helpful and if you bookmark it you can come back again to look the zip codes up as soon as you need them. No more hunting for old letters or christmas card envelopes with return addresses on them!

Albany Park zip codes- 60625, 60630
Andersonville zip code - 60640
Belmont Cragin zip codes – 60639, 60634, 60641, 60707
Berwyn & Forest Park, IL zip codes - 60402, 60130, 60398
Beverly zip code - 60643
Bridgeport, IL zip codes – 60608, 60616, 60609
Bronzeville - 60653
Bucktown zip codes - 60622, 60647
Chatham zip codes - 60620, 60619
Chinatown zip code - 60608
Dearborn Park & Printer’s Row - 60605
DePaul zip code - 60614
Downers Grove, IL - 60515, 60516
Edgewater - 60640, 60660
Edison Park & Jefferson Park - 60630, 60631, 60646
Englewood - 60636
Evanston, IL - 60201, 60202, 60203
Gold Coast & Streeterville - 60610, 60611
Greektown - 60607
Highland Park, IL - 60035
Horner Park - 60618
Humboldt Park - 60647, 60651, 60624
Hyde Park & Kenwood - 60615, 60637, 60653
Irving Park - 60641, 60618
Lakeview - 60657, 60613
Lincoln Park - 60614
Lincoln Square - 60625, 60659
Logan Square - 60647, 60641, 60639
Loop - 60601, 60602, 60603, 60604, 60605, 60606
Marquette Park - 60629
Naperville, IL - 60540, 60563, 60564, 60565
Near North Chicago- 60610, 60611, 60654, 60606
Near South Chicago - 60605, 60607
Near West Chicago - 60606, 60607, 60610, 60612, 60622, 60661, 60608, 60616
North Center & St. Ben’s - 60613, 60618, 60657
North Park & Budlong Woods – 60625, 60659, 60646, 60630 Old Town: 60610, 60614
Oak Lawn, IL - 60453, 60454, 60456, 60457, 60458, 60459
Oak Park & River Forest, IL - 60301, 60302, 60303, 60304, 60305
Pilsen & Little Village - 60608, 60616
Portage Park - 60641
Ravenswood – 60625, 60640
River North - 60610, 60611
River West - 60606, 60622, 60610, 60661
Rogers Park – 60626 Roscoe Village: 60618, 60657
Schaumburg, IL - 60173, 60179, 60192, 60193, 60194, 60195, 60196
Skokie, IL - 60076, 60077
South Shore - 60649, 60617, 60619, 60637
St Charles, IL – 60174
Tri-Taylor & UIC University Village – 60607
Ukrainian Village - 60622, 60612, 60607
Uptown & Buena Park - 60640, 60660, 60613
Washington Park - 60615, 60637, 60609, 60621
West Ridge & Warren Park - 60659, 60645
West Town - 60612, 60622, 60647, 60610
Wicker Park - 60622, 60647, 60614
Wilmette, IL - 60091
Winnetka, IL - 60093
Wrigleyville Chicago - 60613, 60657

Chicago condos and real estate values have dropped in a little in the last 6 months so if you were priced out of the market before, you may be able to afford the right property now. You can find some of the hottest properties in Lakeview, Lincoln Park and Old Town (Gold Coast) for about 5-7% less than they were last spring. 5-7% may not sound like much but on a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo with parking on the north side, it may have brought the price down from $350,000.00 to $325,000.00. Saving 25K on your mortgage makes things a lot more affordable. And there is a ton of inventory available. Just check Chicago Craigslist or Realtor.com. Both sites are full of new condo listings every day.

I am writing this because I think people have forgotten that even though there are some people who bought places that were too expensive and on adjustable loans, there are other people out there that are just moving for real reasons. Work, marriage and family are all legitimate reasons to sell your home or condo, not everyone is in financial difficulty. You can sell your place in this market with a little more marketing and a little more time. You shouldn’t write it off completely. There are people looking to buy who have good finances and are not at all at risk, and one of them might be interested in your property although you won’t get as much as you would for it before. 

It is also important to look at condo buying and home buying in general as a long term investment in order to make sure you don’t loose money on the purchase. If you think about it, your home is likely the most expensive thing you will ever buy and pay for so you want to make sure you are getting the best deal buying and selling. A few thousand dollars with mortgage interest tacked on can lengthen the time to pay it off by years and sink in additional tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the loan. So buying wisely is very important. Here are a few condo buying tips since I have gone through this process before:

1. Buy something less than you can afford. If the bank says they can give you a loan for a maximum of $320,000.00 don’t use that as your price target, because it will be extremely hard to pay the payments and you could very easily loose it. Tell the realtor your price limit is 275K and they will show you condos around 280-285K. Then when you make and offer on a condo try and offer about 5% less than the price and expect to meet somewhere in the middle. The difference in monthly payments at 7% interest is about $300 which is a $3600.00 when you add it up every year. What else could you do with $3,600.00?

2. Don’t view it as a short term investment. In order to make money on a home or condo you have to live there for more than 10 years at current rates. So, don’t buy and count on selling in 3 or 5 years because you will loose money on the deal. Remember buying is easier because you don’t pay the commissions or taxes on the transaction. Selling takes money out of your profit when it is a 5% commission for the realtor and a 2% sales tax in Cook County. This also doesn’t include movers and redecorating costs of the new place. You need 10 years of appreciation to pay for the move and all the fees and still make it out ahead.

3. Don’t buy a condo unless you love it. Seriously. I didn’t love my place and now I hate it. If I would have gotten all my list of needs and wishes I wouldn’t want to move ever. Location is included in this. If you are planning on buying a home way out in the boonies of the far west suburbs or far north side, consider your hour or two commute to work across the chicagoland area or to get downtown. This will seem negligible at first and then will drive you nuts the longer you have to do it. Unless you take public transit, your costs will also be higher when you spend all that time stuck in traffic burning up gas. A central location is best if you switch jobs a lot. (or you could just rent)   

I got my Oak Park FYI newsletter in the mail today and it has a mention that a new condo tower will be built at South Avenue and Harlem Avenue in Oak Park. Don’t we have enough condos in Oak Park? At any given moment in the current housing crash and real estate meltdown there are over 500 condos for sale in Oak Park already. So, they are wiping out 140 public parking spaces in order to get a parking garage under almost 100 new condos that no one will buy. There are about 10 rehab and new condo developments  in Oak Park for sale already, that are not able to sell any units as it is. And any owner that wants to sell will never gain any equity or value or ever sell with this many on the market.

There is a glut in this area’s market because it is overdeveloped! So for the love of God, STOP BUILDING and Converting CONDOS!!! I know the big developers don’t care and the Realtors are happy to lie to people and say you will gain value year over year on your condo, but you won’t. (the old data they usually show you is from 1997-2003) Oak Park has a multitude of problems and the developers and Realtors are making it even worse. They are taking advantage of good people that haven’t lived here before and don’t know all the details on why it sucks to buy here like I did. Don’t get sucked into this trap. It can be a financial disaster and a huge mistake to buy a property in Oak Park.

The exact blurb from the newsletter is as follows:

“An agreement has been reached with Morningside Equities Group, Inc. on the terms for a new $30-million mixed-use project at South Boulevard and Harlem Avenue. The eight-story development will contain 96 condominium units, 12,500 square feet of new retail space and a parking garage in the heart of the downtown shopping area. The current site’s 143 parking lot spaces will be replaced with 245 public parking spaces in the new public garage. The public spaces are in addition to dedicated on-site parking for the condominium owners. The building will be designed and constructed to achieve certification through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. A formal redevelopment agreement between the Village and Morningside is expected to be signed before the end of the year. The project then will enter the planned development process, which includes opportunities for public comment. For more information on the project or process, call 358.5644 or e-mail devsvcs@oak-park.us. “

They don’t tell you that it costs $100-$150 per quarter to park in a public lot.

Here are the reasons NOT to buy any property in Oak Park ever:

1. Whatever you pay for the new, rehabbed or redeveloped condo you buy will be worth less a year from now and still worth less 5 years from now. The housing slump isn’t creating this problem, overdevelopment is. This was happening in Oak Park two years before the rest of the country had a slump.  In the 1990′s Oak Park had a mini-boom and many people saw their real estate value jump up each year, but since about 2003 only stand alone houses have increased in value. There has been a glut of condos for sale since 2001 and that has caused condominium values to drop and stagnate at these lower levels. (simple economics, there is not enough demand and an over supply; not that many people want to live there because of the crime and extremely high costs)  They get away with this scam by putting fancy granite counter tops and new appliances in very old buildings with lead paint, lead pipes, bad windows, sagging floors and leaky roofs. Many young first time home buyers buy into it thinking it will be new and redone and face thousands of dollars in additional work that has to be done afterwards. A friend of mine has had a leaky roof problem that will cost him $30,000.00 to fix. The builder is being sued but even if they win he won’t see that money for at least 5 years. So he is paying out of pocket with a second loan and a second morgage payment to get the water to stop coming in his condo. It’s a nightmare. You should be aware of these risks. You could be buying a place with serious faults that causes you to spend thousands of dollars to fix it and then your property value drops on top if it. It’s a double bad situation.

2. Oak Park taxes are higher than anywhere else I have lived and higher than most places in Chicago. Why? Because the city has nowhere to gain revenues from except it’s residents. There is no business or industry or commerical property to make money from. The largest employers in the town of Oak Park are the Rush Oak Park hospital and #2 is the town of Oak Park. That isn’t much and the small stores and small businesses there don’t generate enough sales tax revenue or other taxes to pay for much. So they devised this parking ticket scheme to make money and taxes are very high. They say to count on 2.5% of your home’s purchase price. An average home in Oak Park is vintage (needs a lot of work every year) and costs $500,000.00. That makes your property tax bill $12,500.00 per year and $1,042 per month. There is a homeowner exemption, but that is just $400.00. Not much help. By comparison in Downers Grove a 500K home will get a 1.5% tax bill of $7,500.00. And that is in a town of lower crime and better schools. So, that is pretty convincing to me.

3. The Parking in Oak Park is rigged on purpose. It is in place to make money for the town by taking advantage of the fact that there is very little parking available. It’s the scam of the century. Oak Park doesn’t make enough tax money from businesses because it’s almost all residential and something has to pay for all the police, new schools and the salaries of the town of Oak Park’s employees since it is the largest employer in the town. They don’t require builders and developers to provide parking spaces or garages with the property it develops or converts on purpose. They purposely want to restrict the availability and access of parking so they can make a large chunk of their revenue from parking tickets each year.  (the article above is only including enough parking to replace what was there and the parking for the high priced units, not enough for people who don’t have parking now, and it doesn’t help people who don’t live in that area of the town who don’t have parking) The parking ticket agents hunt cars down and know when the lot time or meter expires and are ready to write a $30, $50 or $100 dollar ticket. And they will write you more than one in a day if they can. ( I couldn’t be surprised if they have quotas to fill or get bonuses for writing more tickets) The town also puts a boot on your car wheels and suspends your driver’s license if you have more than 3 unpaid tickets. In Oak Park, that can take about a day and a half to accumulate, and then you have to pay $150.00 and get them to remove the boot plus the original tickets. People say the parking is bad here, but no one has been able to get the city government to do anything about it because the government is profiting of the problem they purposely created to take advantage of residents. They also know low income people aren’t active in politics or in donating to their campaigns so they aren’t pissing off anyone they care about or depend on, and they take advantage of those who live in low income housing and low priced condo units. Don’t give Oak Park any more money and certainly don’t park there.

4. There is a lot more crime, theft, drugs and gangs in Oak Park than a Realtor would like you to think. Oak Park is in many ways an extension of the City of Chicago and an extension of the City’s problems. No one talks about the crime, it is always very hush hush and hard to find out about. The crimes range from bikes stolen to cars broken into and stolen to break-ins and some homicide deaths. (those usually make the news) There have been more homicides in Oak Park every year since I have been here, yet no one talks about the rate going up. It is also curious that every time there is a helicopter circling overhead, another escaped criminal is in Oak Park. They get out of the Cook County Jail and make a beeline for Oak Park because it is next to Maywood and Bellwood or the West Side of Chicago. Do you think that maybe people are also having a hard time existing in this town with all these costs and regulations and are turning to drugs, theft and crime to try and get by? Not everyone makes over 100K a year and can afford all the costs of Oak Park, and for a lot of low income people who have been born and raised here, Oak Park is very frustrating.

5. Oak Park is very very polluted and dirty. I-290, the Metra trains and the cargo freight trains all make Oak Park a very polluted place. Black soot falls from the sky daily landing on windowsills and cars which is from the diesel freight train engines that stay parked and running all night next to 290 or along the Metra lines by Lake Street and South Blvd. The car pollution is bad and the noise pollution is even worse. They even route the air traffic from O’Hare and Midway overhead to make sure we get all the possible toxins we can. It is much more polluted than the rest of the Chicagoland area but people don’t talk about it, because no one is supposed to know.

6. When you try to sell your condo you will need 12 months or more to find a buyer because there are 500 other condos for sale and almost no buyers. You will be forced to pay a village property sales tax of $8 per each $1000 of your sale price called a property transfer stamp. (no other town has this!) With all the fees including the property transfer tax stamp and the realtors, lawyers, cook county and the state of IL, your fees will run about 10% of your sale price. I know I just finally sold. That was what the total was. So you have to make more than that 10% you loose to fees, just because the property is located in Oak Park.

7. They are public works project happy. The government in Oak Park is the largest employer of workers in the town and they see public works projects as their birthright and choose anything and everything to build in order to spend tax payers money. There have been propsals floated for every hairbrained idea from capping 290 and making it a concrete tunnel with a park on top to more and more condos. Basically everyone pays for these (like the ginormous library nobody uses?) and nobody really benefits.

Do yourself a favor, and buy a home anywhere outside Oak Park and Chicago, out in the real suburbs where it’s your right to park anywhere you want any time you want, and your home’s value will increase at a rate faster than inflation. Plus the schools are a lot better out there and it is much safer to live there too. Don’t fall into the trap of living in Oak Park it will cost you more money and you get far less than in other suburbs.

I was startled to find out that there are red light cameras monitoring the intersections on Boughton Road in Bolingbrook, IL now. These cameras are taking photograph evidence of cars at the intersection in order to write tickets. These thing they call violations are hardly so. They have been sending $100.00 tickets to people who don’t stop behind the white line (including your bumper) at the intersection and people who do not stop their car 100% behind the white line before making a right turn on red. They call both of these violations “running a red light”. That’s the worst lie for the sake of greed and money I have ever heard.

It is expected that these cameras make over $20,000.00 per month per camera, (that makes over 200 tickets per month and about 10 tickets per day.) on writing these negligible unnecessary tickets to otherwise perfectly law abiding citizens. They don’t think you are a bad person doing anything wrong, they just want more money and couldn’t get a tax referendum passed, so consider these tickets property tax payments that they can do whatever they want with in Bolingbrook. Will they pass that money on to companies of their friends that want construction and other types of contracts with the city an un-negotiated absurdly high rates? Probably. It’s not like they put these cameras up for paying for school lunch programs and tutors and after school enrichment programs. The government and police of Bolingbrook couldn’t possibly care less about the community and the well being of kids. They just care about money.

This got me thinking about how you can avoid these cameras and avoid paying 200 or 300 dollars extra every month that you could have spent paying down your mortgage. These ideas have come from the 4 people I know who have gotten these tickets and are flaming mad. Use these suggestions to help yourself avoid being ticketed by camera in Bolingbrook, and leave me a comment below about any other ideas you have about avoiding this unjust charge.

Also, I found the official press release (that I am sure no one was able to find to know this was coming) and it places these cameras as going live in May of 2007. From the Bolingbrook town site:

Press Release #07-27Date: Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Time: 2:10pm
Topic: Red Light Cameras
Prepared By: Lt. Chris Prochut #936NARRATIVE The “RedSpeed” red-light traffic cameras located at the intersections of Boughton & Pinecrest Road and Boughton & Schmidt Road are no longer in the “warning” phase.  Violators are now subject to a fine for any red-light violation. The units are complimented by large signs warning motorists that the intersection is monitored by photographic enforcement.

Two additional intersections are scheduled to receive this photographic enforcement and will become operational in the near future, in this order:
Boughton Road and Weber
Boughton Road and Route 53

5 Ways to avoid paying a few hundred dollars in fines every monthif you live in or around the Naperville, Bolingbrook, Downers Grove area:

1. Avoid Boughton Road, Weber, Pincerest Road, Schmidt Road and Rt 53 at all costs. You can most likely get to work, school, the stores (outside of Bolingbrook) and home by side streets around these camera hungry intersections. This is the most legal way to get around this, since I know everyone tries to stop behind the white line and fully before a right turn, no on intends on doing anything wrong, no one ever gets hurt, and it’s too stressful to have to worry about loosing $100.00 on your drive home from work when you are already stressed from work itself. It’s not worth the worry. Go around them. (although more are planned for other Bolingbrook intersections and in many other suburbs for more revenue soon)

2. Get blur obstruction licence plate covers. These may or may not be illegal in certain towns, but they may save you the ticket. The clear licence plate cover protects the plate from dirt and grime but it also is blurry when read from the side or above. This is usually the angle that cameras are at since they put them high where citizens can’t reach them and disable them easily. Just ask how many cameras get disabled in the UK and London each day.

3. You can take this up with the local government in the town by writing letters, starting an action group for free motoring without reconnaissance but I doubt you will get much traction because the government officials usually just care about making a lot of money and when it is from a legal source like tickets and fines, they don’t have to get vote approval from the citizens like they would for a tax increase. They use the PR line that it is only hurting citizens who break the law, and we all know that is a lie. If a cop won’t get out of his car on a rainy day to write a ticket for a violation, it’s not big enough to warrant writing a ticket for, because it’s not doing any harm or danger to anyone. (but when they make $20,000.00 per camera per month, they don’t care about if it’s hurting anyone, it makes them balance their budget and not have to say no to their friends who want business contracts with the town)

4. Elect someone else to Mayor of the town to change this policy. Know someone who would be better at the job? Maybe you? Run against them and return your town to a happier state of being. You will be a hero.

5. This may be the smartest thing to do about this yet. If you don’t live in Bolingbrook and have to go through that town, don’t spend any money there anymore at all. They don’t deserve our sales tax dollars, and I am going to give my sales tax dollars to other towns that don’t ticket me just for driving my car. No Ikea, no shopping, no gas stations, no money spent in Bolingbrook ever again. They won’t get any sales tax from people and that revenue will be hurt much more than the revenue that they gain from these unwarranted tickets.

No one needs to tell us that Chicago has awful and unbearable traffic jams and congestion. We are familiar with sitting in traffic on any highway or street at any hour of the day or night. (I have sat in traffic jams at 2am) What we didn’t know is that Chicago ranked 2nd in a national study on the worst traffic in the country. (and by Chicago, we mean mostly the Suburbs) Los Angeles is the worst, they loose 72 hours a year in traffic. The 2007 Urban Mobility Report studied the number of cars on the roads and the travel times required to get around in the largest cities in America. (nothing is sexier than the study of traffic flow) 

The charts I was able to find actually ranked Chicago 3rd on the list behind NYC and LA, rather than just LA like all the media outlets have been reporting.  Chicago commuters loose on average 46 hours each per year sitting in traffic. Chicago drivers also waste 32 extra gallons of gas each sitting in that traffic on their highway of choice. In my car that’s 2 full gas tanks worth, and at current prices it adds up to an extra $100.00 per year. That shouldn’t break the budget, but who likes wasting money or gas at a time like this? Collectively we are spewing those extra 32 gallons of gas into the air as carbon emissions and getting nothing back. Not even the mobility we were promised when we bought our cars.

Chicago is a car loving town. I know of about 10 suburbs that have “crusin” nights for cars and many more have summer “car shows”. We all see the monster houses with 2, 3 or 4 car garages. Yes some are for storage but more are really holding cars. I think the 1950′s suburban boom was fueled by cheap oil and gas. (see the documentary Escape from Suburbia, it explains more)  It started to change where people chose to live because more middle class Americans could afford a car for the first time. (around $1000.00 if you bought it used, $2,000.00 if it was new, insurance was not required then, and you could park anywhere for free, gas was arund $0.30 per gallon)

This led to Sunday drives and trips to places by car that were farther away than you would normally go in a day.  At that time families lived closer to relatives and within walking distance to those necessities you needed in town. When cheap oil and affordable cars started changing things people discovered the potential of the suburbs.

You could buy a newly built home further out from the city for a lot less than you could in Chicago. People started migrating from Chicago to near suburbs first. (Berwyn, Cicero, Stickney, LaGrange, Westchester, Park Ridge and Lyons) Then when those were filled up the next generation of new home buyers just went out further. (Downers Grove, Darien, Hinsdale, Willowbrook, Oak Brook and Glen Ellyn) The next generation went further yet. (Naperville, Wheaton, Plainfield) and now we have colonized Aurora and Joliet as Chicago Suburbs. The new young couples today buy a home for under 200K with a yard, garage and a lot of bedrooms is go out to farthest reaches of the end of civilization like Minooka and Sandwich. Those  towns do offer cheap housing at a good deal, but the price you pay every day is that you will spend 2 hours getting to work and back in traffic.

In past generations things worked out ok. The house you bought as a young newlywed became a highly valued asset over your lifetime multiplying it’s value by 10 times and civilization came to you, eventually… I am not so sure this will be possible for the next generation of Chicago home owners. It’s not because we don’t have enough land, we have endless supply there, but we don’t have the resources to support sprawl like that anymore. And we don’t have enough space on the roads for all these people going to and from their cheap suburban housing out in Minooka.

I reversed my family’s migration pattern and moved back into the city. (they were appaled by the way, nothing pisses of suburbanites like their kid moving into the same city their ancestors worked so hard to get out of) I live within walking distance of the EL and Metra and Bus service. I do own a car, but it sits in storage and I maybe drive it once a week. I know most Americans and almost all Chicagoans don’t like this kind of living. It’s still socially associated with the working class immigrants that were our ancestors working in factories and living a hard life. It isn’t very showy either, and suburbanites like showy. So it may be a bit of an embarrassment to my family but I think it is a smarter way to live.

How can more people in Chicago live smarter with transportation? Here are some ideas:

1. Live near your work: If you are a young person renting from year to year, find apartments really close to work. Like walkable if possible or just a 10 minute drive. Others of us in the Chicago area who are more established trade up houses every 5-10 years anyway, so why not make it a priority to live by your job? People move half way across the country for jobs, why would you not move to another suburb? It saves you a ton of money too, if that’s more of a motivator.

2. Travel at off-peak times: I know of more and more companies in Chicago offering a flexible schedule. And I see on the news that the roads are empty at 6:30 am, so take advantage of it. Adjust your travel to get out before the rush and save a ton of time.

3. Stop buying imported goods. What? Yes, the trucking business has exploded as we buy everything from China and have to truck it all over the country. Logistics try and make their runs more efficient, but face it, if we didn’t buy that stuff, and we bought locally produced stuff there would be far fewer 18 wheelers clogging our highways.

4. Drive with friends and neighbors. I am hesitant to use the word Car Pool, but you probably your neighbors and coworkers more than I like the people I sit next to on the CTA train or Bus. A lot more. Consider it a cake walk considered to public transportation, and you should try and just be nice, smile and ask about their kids.

If we don’t change our ways, we will soon be spending 2 hours each way to work and back rather than 1. Every year things just get worse. Do something about it and avoid the traffic and plan a more efficient life.

The Hillside Landfill is the smelliest landfill in Chicago. It has been smelling up 290 in the area by the hillside strangler merge for about 2 years now. I drive by it at least twice a week and even with the windows on my car closed and the air conditioning system off, I still smell that stench of rotting garbage for about 3 minutes. It’s awful. Apparently it used to be a quarry (not unusual for this area, limestone is commonly mined) and was transitioned as a 55 acre landfill once all the mining was done and it hasn’t taken long to fill it up. (please comment if you know the opening date of the landfill)

They have a large banner out now which is viewable from the highway that says that the Hillside Landfill is closing in 2008. Great! What does that mean? Does it mean they will stop putting garbage in it then? Does it mean the smell will go away? Does it mean something to us who are driving by smelling this disgusting smell every day? Or is it just some kind of PR ploy to get us to stop complaining about it?

Apparently Lisa Madigan, the EPA and the State are suing the Allied Waste removal company that owned the landfill but went bankrupt after a deal to capture the methane gas and use it to generate electricity fell through. They then stopped maintaining it and running the systems that manage the smell several years ago. The management of a landfill seems to be about covering it with a layer of some kind of liner (plastic?) to contain the smell and piping the methane gas that is building from the rotting garbage from inside, up to the top where it is burned off of pipes or chimneys placed throughout the landfill. Then they top it with 3 feet of topsoil and try and plant grass and greenery on top. You can see an example of our past garbage dumping and burying along I-55 in Stickney between the LaGrange and the Cicero and Berwyn exits. (it’s the high hills across from the sewage treatment ponds, (yes that’s what that dark liquid is) on the west side of the highway. Apparently containing the waste removal and garbage containment of 9 million people in Chicagoland isn’t as easy as we thought.

With today’s world being increasingly throw-away and disposable I am surprised I only know of 3 landfills in the Chicago area. (there is another one (now closed) on the Naperville-Woodridge border by 75th street under a bunch of high power electrical lines, they built townhouses next door, ewww.)  When all 3 of these known landfills closed, where will all our trash go? It’s not like people are throwing away less these days? I can only find Onyx Waste removal’s landfills listed on the internet in Zion (who also has a lovely nuclear reactor which powers all the electricity for the Chicago Area) and Davis Junction, IL.  We see green initiatives being talked about all over the place today and see the movies about the planet dying, but it’s not like anything is really changing yet.  I think the surest way that people like you and me can ensure there isn’t another stinky 290 situation is to stop using and throwing away so much garbage.

I have lived in Chicago my entire life and I have never seen the real estate and housing market take a crash like it has been doing this summer. Summer is usually the best time to sell or buy a new home or property. This summer of 2007 has been bad for real estate values and home sales in general because of the market crash that has been the results of so many sub-prime mortgages being defaulted on right now, and so many banks and loan companies going bankrupt or having financial problems. It is a little scary actually. I own a small condo in the Near West Chicago Suburbs. It has not increased in value in 2 years. (it may have for a short while but whatever it gained it since lost)

If you know Chicago you know that Oak Park much like Evanston and Chicago itself have been over developed with too many condos. Naperville, Aurora, Minooka and Plainfield have too many newly constructed homes. Over development of these areas has left these towns with thousands of condos for sale and some estimates say that over 40% of them are vacant as they are trying to sell them. TIME magazine even did an article about the housing market bust this week explaining how the 0% down and interest only loans given to people without enough income to cover the regular mortgage payments and who bought larger homes than they could afford has backfired now that so many people are forced to deal with forclosure and bankruptcy. I have to say that even though I am not someone in this situation I have seen it first hand. 2 condos in my building (of 42 units) have been foreclosed on in the past year. The first one took almost a year to re-sell for the bank that foreclosed on it. All you have to do is miss 3 payments and then the bank foreclosed and you have no home. I wonder if people realize it is much more fast and aggressive than if you have credit card debt you don’t pay. These banks are aggressive and will not work out a deal with you. It’s very straightforward, you pay your mortgage or you loose your home.

I also have a distant second cousin who is loosing his home to a foreclosure in the far west suburbs of Chicago. Granted he has been unemployed on and off for years, so buying a home may not have been the right thing to do in the first place, but they have 2 kids and they may have to live with one of their parents for the next several years to recoup the losses from this foreclosure and possible bankruptcy. I wish I could say that it was just them that had bad judgement and made a mistake, but there are thousands of people in the same situation.

I guess the low interest rates led us to a situation where more people wanted to buy property than there were properties available and that drove the demand and prices up year after year in the beginning of the boom. (2001-2002 ish) When companies realized they could flip homes and apartment buildings into condos for resale and make a fat profit within a few months, everyone started doing this. Then when banks and loan companies wanted to continue the high volume of sales and closings on new property sales they opened up and lowered the requirements for these home loans and then let people borrow money against no capital and without any verification of their income. Then those sub-prime loans adjust interest rates in a few years. Ala the 3-1, 5-1, 7-1 ARM type loans (adjustable rate mortgage) that you see listed. Those loans are adjusting now. People are not able to meet payments and the homes are being repossessed by foreclosure and there are more homes on the market than there were when it was just overdeveloped. Oak Park alone has over 500 condos for sale and you can get them CHEAP. Like 150K for a 1 bedroom cheap. That is super cheap. And so there is a market with 2-3x more properties for sale and 1/2 the people who would be able to get financing to buy them. Plus now that there is no demand and a huge surplus (basic supply and demand economics class coming back to me) the home and condo prices in Chicago, Oak Park and everywhere else are coming down. So people are not seeing the increase in value anymore without the demand driving it. Somewhere along the way we decided that this 5-10% value increase every year was a god given right.  It isn’t and a lot of people loose money on real estate that does not gain value over time. So it isn’t always better to buy, unless you plan on paying off your mortgage in full and living there a long time.

30 year fixed mortgages are the only way to go.  In fact the 30 year fixed mortgage and the tax deductible mortgage interest was originally devised not as a get rich quick scheme, but a way to provide for Americans in their retirement. Think about it for a second, do you want to still pay a mortgage or rent housing payment when you are retired and are living on your meager social security payments?  No, no one does, and to survive then, your home has to be paid off. I think that people forget that not having housing payments as a senior citizen is the goal of buying real estate. Not to impress your friends, not to make a ton of money, but to live within your means and provide for your future. 

So, I don’t know when all this housing decline will stop in Chicago or across the United States, but I hope that people reel in their housing expectations because no one is entitled to a fancy house with granite counter-tops and stainless steel appliances. That is a privilege you have to work hard for, it’s not a right.

All that aside, buying a home or condo should be a good thing to do in Chicago or the Chicago Suburbs. In the time I have lived here it has provided to be a good place to live, work, play and raise a family. I have always found that there are more work and entertainment opportunities here than in most places in the Midwest. I have also found that most all the suburban schools are great, and some Chicago schools have gotten a lot better in recent years. The city has cleaned up a lot of neighborhoods, although it lacks action in many others. Most people who live in Chicago or the Suburbs long term can expect a comfortable existence with moderate taxes, plentiful shopping and lots of entertainment, arts and sports teams to attend to. The one downfall of our beloved city is the traffic on the roads and all the pollution, but every city has to deal with that. So, if you are one of those people who has cash on hand to make a down payment on a house or condo and has good credit, well done to you. Don’t be afraid of buying a home or property in Chicago, in the long term it is a good investment as a great place to live, work and raise a family.