Do You Really Want a House Versus a Condo? 1505 W. Victoria in Edgewater
This 2-bedroom cottage house at 1505 W. Victoria in Edgewater recently came on the market.
Built in 1886 on a smaller than standard Chicago lot of 25×115, it does have a 2-car garage.
The listing doesn’t list the square footage.
But we know that there are two bedrooms upstairs, plus a 9×8 office, and a living/dining room and kitchen on the main floor.
There doesn’t appear to be any basement.
The kitchen is a galley style and has white cabinets and stainless steel appliances.
The house does have central air.
The house is listed at $64,000 over the 2004 purchase price.
Are single family homes (versus a condo in the same neighborhood) that much more in demand that this property will sell for a premium?
Paul Ahlatis at Dream Town has the listing. See the pictures here.
1505 W. Victoria: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, no square footage listed, 2 car garage
- Sold in May 1995 for $145,000
- Sold in March 2004 for $415,000
- Currently listed for $479,000
- Taxes of $4691
- Central Air
- Bedroom #1: 13×12 (second floor)
- Bedroom #2: 11×9 (second floor)
- Office: 9×8 (second floor)
- Living room: 17×13
- Dining room: 13×13
- Kitchen: 13×7
The upstairs bathroom needs to be turned into a common bathroom for the second floor. The second bedroom and office should be combined. It’s a cute house but not the most functional with its current layout.
Almost half a million dollars… I literally laughed out loud showing my husband this.
I can see myself cooking in this tiny kitchen. To my left when at the range, ooh, there’s the fridge. Smart! And to the right, some landing space. Oh wait, that’s the sink. Well, at least there’s other storage. Ooops. Dishwasher, three-drawer bank, some kind of small corner thingy, and what looks like 2 small uppers. I always wonder what happens to this kind of place. For what you’d need to do to make it viable for today (i.e., address upstairs bath situation, which is hard given tiny amt of available space), it’s just not worthwhile given what else one could get and the fact that it’s extremely small.
Is this area safe? I know some areas of Edgewater are really rough. My grandpa lived a few blocks from here in one of the high rises on the lake and we always felt slightly unsafe parking the car and walking back to it at night. The safety seemed to go block by block and depending on which block we found parking, we felt safe or unsafe.
Plus, for the price of this house, you could by something like 8 one bedroom condos in one of those high rises. I would take one massive condo over this tiny house.
I’ll take a tiny condo over this tiny deferred maintenance nightmare in a subpar neighborhood miles from my job
Area is safe. It’s Andersonville basically.
I definitely like SFHs over condos, but I don’t think this one cuts it, especially at this price. The layout does seem odd (when you look at the floorplan…which does make it look like there are stairs down to a basement) and while it seems updated it isn’t really modern updates. I’d think this home needs to sell at a price low enough to allow the buyers to do some reconfiguring or at least finish the basement. Therefore, I think even the 2004 price is optimistic. Good luck to the sellers at this price!
This is a better deal and closer to the LOOP.
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/944-N-Racine-Ave-60642/home/14109451
“This is a better deal and closer to the LOOP.
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/944-N-Racine-Ave-60642/home/14109451”
And it’s sold. And it’s sandwiched between the train tracks and the expressway in no kinda hood.
@Jenny. There was a stabbing/murder in a household on that street a few years back. Probably not random but almost $500K for basically an uninhabitable home there. It is a joke.
“This is a better deal”
Heck, this one, even while likely full of all sorts of trouble, and headaches:
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1531-W-Victoria-St-60660/home/13408997
is a better “deal” on teh same block.
Yeah, that place on Racine is in a pretty awful location.
This area is pretty nice and well-liked, but that price isn’t going to work in this economy. Best comparable sale seems to be http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1644-W-Edgewater-Ave-60660/home/13405782 sold at 323k, so these sellers are not going to be happy.
west of broadway is very very safe over there. one of the most underrated hoods in my opinion. go walk around. you’ll see why. nevertheless, too much for this one.
“Yeah, that place on Racine is in a pretty awful location.”
no its not, yeah its not the most walkable or green area but its a cool little enclave of the city and its not bad living there at all, I have a friend who lives around there and its great
That ugly fence (and it’s not the only one of that kind that I’ve been seeing on the North Side lately) is a definite deal-killer!
“That ugly fence (and it’s not the only one of that kind that I’ve been seeing on the North Side lately) is a definite deal-killer!”
agreed. I’ve also been seeing a lot of that Fish-scale shingle siding lately on rehabs…is someone having a sale on scales?
“There was a stabbing/murder in a household on that street a few years back. Probably not random but almost $500K for basically an uninhabitable home there. It is a joke.”
What street?
It could have been Olive St. (everybody was up in arms) actually, but point is that specific area is NOT that nice and those two streets are one in the same area. I lived in probably what you would consider Andersonville “proper” south of Bryn Mawr, and north of it was different. I frequently parked my car on that Victoria street and, hey, it wasn’t bad but there were undesirables always working on their cars and letting their dogs run free like a jungle and $29 car alarms going off all the time too. I would never buy a house there much less a $500 one. Seriously people. It is a joke. $200K. Final offer, IF. It’s only been a few years. Maybe it’s changed.
This is in a really nice area— I hate when people generalize entire neighborhoods based on one story years ago. That’s ridiculous! Edgewater has a lot going for it and I think it would be great owning a single-family home near the lake, Andersonville and public transportation. I am also kind of shocked someone referred to this house as “uninhabitable”— not huge but in really nice shape. Comps in the area show single family homes selling for just under $400,000.
I apologize for calling that little corner of Goose Island(?) “awful”. I am not very familiar with the area so I’ll refrain from judgement.
As for these dogs running free like a “jungle” that’s just nonsense. Do you mean the yuppies who let their dogs play at Senn on the weekends? Andersonville is one of the nicest areas in the whole city and there is certainly not some ghetto that starts at Bryn Mawr.
The place is worth 275-350k. This is not a bad area by any means and SFHs are at a premium.
My in-town is in the neighborhood and I was puzzled by the comments about the area being sketchy, so I took a walk over to look at this place. By mistake I ended up in front of the wrong house with the same coloring which also had a for sale sign out front. It was on the same block but over by Clark. There are a couple of houses next to each other which are run-down on an otherwise sickeningly cute block.
So while I was standing there looking at the wrong house with it’s 63 names on the buzzer, its weed-choked gutters and trash-strewn entrance wondering why Sabrina profiled it, these 2 thugs rolled up.
One of them was young with several large gold medallions and a ride with some fancy rims. The other guy was an older Cheech and Chong-ish burn-out.
So Cheech was like “Who’re you looking for?!”
I said “No one. I’m just looking at the house. Do you live here?”
He goes “Sometimes. Well, I’ve got the keys anyway.”
He looked homeless.
I was like “Are you the…caretaker?”
He goes “You could say that.” Then proceeded to light a fat blunt on the street.
The he goes “How much do you wanna pay?”
I’m like “I dunno! I don’t know how much it costs. I’m just looking.”
And he’s insistent and won’t drop it – “Well, what’s your range? How much do you wanna pay?” and takes a long drag.
So then Gold Medallions goes “You don’t want it. It’s a teardown. The guy who owns it is a a slumlord. My grandma lives there. She pays $1,100 for a 2 bedroom. It’s expensive and she’s got roaches and we’re trying to move her to the suburbs but she doesn’t wanna leave.”
So then Cheech takes another drag, exhales and goes “How about we be partners? Go into real estate together?”
So I politely declined again and the 2 guys ambled south down the alley and I walked down Clark. Until they came out of the alley a block down and we ran into each other again and it was a little awkward and Cheech told me I was cute and then we all went our separate ways.
I went back and took a look at the right house at 1505 W Victoria and the fence is unfortunate-looking, but it does afford you some nice privacy and the house itself looks like it’s in good shape. Aside from the couple of grimy homes by Clark which will eventually either be fixed up or knocked down, the block and the area are excellent although I do think 1505 W Victoria is way overpriced, especially for a frame house.
Went to see during a recent open house – very cute place if you are interested in a 2-bedroom home in Andersonville. Won’t work for me, wife and 3 kids. Great front and back yards and front porch – ideal for small family with dogs.
Fred