Are All Pre-Foreclosures a Deal? 1048 W. Lawrence in Uptown
Lots of listings now say “pre-foreclosure” or “foreclosure soon” or “short sale” or “motivated seller” but does that mean the property is really a “deal”?
Check out this listing for 1048 W. Lawrence, Unit #4, in Uptown:
PRE-FORECLOSURE!!! ONE OF UPTOWN’S BEST PRICED 2BD/2BA PH! JUST 2 YRS NEW! INCREDIBLE FINISHES W/ 11′ TRAY CEILINGS! CHERRY KIT. W/ GRANITE, STAINLESS, CUSTOM PENDANT LIGHTS! LUX. MARBLE MASTER BATH W/ CHERRY VANITY, HUGE MARBLE SHOWER
GREAT LIGHT! GREAT DETAILING: TRAY CEILINGS, CROWN MOLDING, 4′ BASEBOARDS, HDWD FLRS THROUGHOUT, CUST. WOOD BLINDS! IN UNIT W/D! 1 BLOCK TO RED LINE, 3 BLOCKS TO LAKEFRONT
You might think this unit is a “deal” because it’s a pre-foreclosure- but is it?
Unit #4: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1300 square feet
- Sold in June 2005 for $310,000
- Currently listed for $309,000 (don’t know if the parking is included)
- Assessments of $174 a month
- @Properties has the listing
Ohmygod, $309K for a fugly rehab in this beautiful building? This is laughable. This place never rated more than $165K on the best day of the past 100 years.
I had such high hopes for this great-looking old place, but the rehabber blew it.
This is the typical old-building rehab of the “boom” years- everything malevolently clean-walled and “open”- just another stacked urban multi-family tract house. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were in a cheap townhouse in Schaumburg or someplace.
I’d want to gut the place again and completely rebuild it.
Additionally, the area is still pretty marginal, bums and lowlifes tossing trash all over the place.
Short sales are a waste of time because the banks are basically non-responsive. Who can blame them? Should they actually trust what realtors tell them about the “value” of a property in a short sale? I think that the bank-realtor relationship will have to mend a long time before the banks believe what they hear again. Anyone would do better to wait for the bank to offer it as an REO, especially this early in the correction.
There are outside spaces at the property, but I could not find that the owner purchased parking. The listing does say “deeded, sold seperately.” The recorder says the current owner purchased 6/20/05 for $310,000 with two mortgages totaling $294,310 ($247,840 + 46,470.) The smaller mortgage was paid off with a cash-out refi on 4/5/07 for $72,000.
$309k for a 2 bedroom so far north it takes well over a half hour to get downtown?
Why dont I just live in Oak Park in a 2 bedroom for 200-235? Its equidistant and pretty much the same surroundings.
Oh, yes, the surroundings in this part of uptown are JUST like Oak Park…except no one is getting shot in front of the Lake St. theater (which is more than I can say for the Aragon) and there aren’t bums loitering everywhere and I can actually walk my dog at 2 a.m. without worry and wealthy people actually choose to send their kids to our public schools and people aren’t stealing the copper out of all our light posts and the lights on our playgrounds work and people don’t find that the seats and entire dashboard of their cars have been removed while they were at work. Plus, you can get a bungalow in Oak Park for the price of this condo and be in the loop in under 30 mins. Not that I have anything against Uptown, of course! 🙂
I’d say your surroundings are considerably better in Oak Park.
Or in Rogers Park, or Edgewater, or West Ridge.
I think Laura and my view’s on the place couldn’t be any more different. Highlighting that one man’s trash is anothers treasure.
The only thing I find ugly about this building is the front. They did a great job on the interior of hiding the ugliness and plainness of the front of the building.
I take a certain, perhaps sadistic, amusement whenever Laura bemoans that a rehabber has destroyed a “vintage” place. 🙂 I see nothing at all special in “vintage” and neither did they at the time. Vintage style was more designed for practicality than for aesthetic purposes and who wants to be reminded they live in an old building?
They seem to have confused “tray ceiling” with “poorly hidden ductwork”.
The only thing that matters in determing whether something is a deal is the price, not whether it’s a short sale, foreclosure, pre-foreclosure or whether it’s at any other stage of the process. As has been stated, this place is not worth anywhere near $309k. I wouldnt live here for free. I do agree with Bob, however, that everyone’s tastes are different…my own view is that the outside of the place is a huge minus, not a plus, and that the inside is neither a plus nor a minus (who knows what it looked like before this, but it probably looked old). The area is beyond a minus, its a deal breaker at any price for me. I understand though, that some thrive on this sort of urban grittiness.
“I wouldnt live here for free.”
C’mon. As a single guy, I totally would have lived there for free–probably even in the condition the neighborhood was in in the mid-90s. It’s a nice-ish 2br apartment. The area is fine during the day and I could afford a really big lock, what with free rent.
Question: Is the neighborhood that bad? I would think it would be ‘quieter’ up there. I guess I have more to learn about the various neighborhoods in Chicago.
What gets me is all those pricey condo’s listed on Craigslist that are two blocks away from “murder row” in the disappearing Cabrini Green.
isn’t every property technically about 60-90 days from foreclosure. is “pre-foreclosure” now a marketing tool? really?!
and i agree with laura. that place has been picked clean to the bone of any potential character or history. bore me to tears with your drywall, home depot doors and (sigh) 1/16″ granite counters.
and man, this is one TOUGH crowd.
By the way – I live in this neighborhood and it takes no more than 15-20 minutes from home to downtown and right near the Red Line. Have you heard of Lake Shore Drive? Andersenville and Lincoln Square are much less accessible to downtown.
“Question: Is the neighborhood that bad? I would think it would be ‘quieter’ up there.”
May be ‘quieter’, but the northside methadone clinics are in the vicinity. And there’s at least one still-active SRO hotel. So your neighbors are a motley crew. And the Aragon and the Riv regularly bring a lot of non-neighbors onto your doorstep, which I think is less than ideal.
That said, as a single guy, I would live in the neighborhood. It has a lot of positives, too. But it’s not comparable to the area around Cabrini, no matter Cabrini’s higher noteriety.
this area has years to go before becoming safe day and night. the alderwoman (schiller) has resisted (for many years) any attempts at regentrification (except for a few projects). uptown could become the new LP or Lakeview, for sure, but it won’t be until she’s retired and a more moderate person takes her place, allowing developers and the market to go to work. in my view, while some buildings have been nicely re-done, the neighborhood itself is no different than 40 years ago, when i started going to aragon for rock concerts.
Uptown rocks. Its really not a bad neighborhood, onlt the meth area. I lived there for years and never had a problem. I think we definately have our share of Scattered site housing though! SCHILLER MUST GO!
Anyway, this place is okay, but I would not want to live on Lawrence, it is too busy of a street. It is close to the mill, Carrol’s and stuff.
You guys a re scaring me about the granite, I am seond guessing putting it in now!
Also, my friend’s GARDEN unit recently sold for $300K in Uptown. 2br, 2ba. Including parking.
There are at least NINE active SRO hotels within a 3 block radius of this place. I counted. I know where they all are and can point them out to you. Two on Winthrop alone, another two on Kenmore, between Argyle and Lawrence. They all house criminals and pedophiles, and the one on Kenmore is directly across the street from a friend’s house. You never saw such goons as what I see in front of that place every summer.
And I’m sure I didn’t count them all.
Schiller actively resists taking action against these fleabags, and as long as she’s in charge, the nabe will be crawling with criminal scum, between the SROs and the halfway houses.
Tell us how you really feel Laura. Really, don’t hold back.
Yes, that is definately the poopy part of Uptown.
Laura, move in to Uptown and vote for me as alderman!
You can use this website to find out what crimes have been reported to CPD in the area:
http://gis.chicagopolice.org/
I love the above site almost as much as crib chatter!
That is a cool site. Only 2 murders in my hood last week!
No shootings or murders in my immediate area, for a change. Thanks for the link.
As an Oak Parker, I know you can’t get a bungalow for $300,000, nless the handful of “two-bedroom/handman special/as-is” houses fit your expectations. And crime? We’ve a burglary problem (cars, houses, copper pipe), a street-mugging problem (guns, knives, rocks), a bike theft problem (sometimes while your child is riding that bike), and a “lax” policing problem (“people need to be careful”). People here are getting mugged in broad daylight by groups of black teens on the residential streets. There, I said it. I don’t think Uptown and Oak Park are that much different, regarding the drawbacks.
And Oak Park is an expensive choice, whether a condo or a house. And the real estate taxes are a nightmare. Overnight street parking is verboten; you must have a private parking space to evade the vigilant parking restrictions.
And it only gets worse. We just received our reassessment from the Cook County Assessor’s Office; our house received a 30% assessment increase. We’re protesting the increase, yes, but resigned to the fact that we need to move. But where? We’ve been here seven years, no major improvements and not under-assessed, and we now see only dropping home-sale prices with little sales activity.
I saw someone defecate in front of this building. I saw 6 public defecations during my Uptown Year of Woe, and the 6 # is more remarkable considering how cold it was this winter. Thankfully, Studs Turkel was not one of them.
this unit is still in short sale mode, but the price has dropped 30K now down to 279,000. almost 10% drop since june. have noticed this drop in a lot of props in uptown.
M,
Don’t feel bad pointing out who commits the crimes, its a fact everyone knows. Statistically blacks represent almost half the arrests for violent crimes (per FBI statistics) yet only represent 12.9% of the broader population. Their per capita crime rate is 4x that of whites. No other demographic segment even comes close. As an aside hispanics only show a 30% increase vs. whites, which perhaps can be explained by environment, 300% can’t.
And most of these liberals who might bemoan me wouldn’t last a month in most southside neighborhoods.