Still Waiting for a Buyer for this Lakeview Cottage: 1750 W. Grace
We’ve chattered about this 4-bedroom cottage home at 1750 W. Grace in Lakeview several times before.
See our June 2009 chatter here.
It is still on the market and has been reduced another $15,000. It is now listed $25,000 under the 2006 purchase price.
The listing says it’s a great alternative to a condo.
It has a two car garage, central air and, most importantly, two bathrooms. It also has a small, but manageable backyard, for those buyers with pets or a green thumb.
It’s not directly on an El line or the metra tracks.
After 16 months and numerous reductions, why isn’t this single family home in Lakeview selling?
Scott Zelkin at @Properties has the listing. See the pictures here.
1750 W. Grace: 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2400 square feet, 2 car garage
- Sold in May 2006 for $555,000
- Was listed in May 2008 for $669,900
- Reduced several times
- Was listed in November 2008 for $584,900
- Withdrawn
- Re-listed in April 2009 for $575,000
- Reduced
- Was listed in June 2009 for $550,000
- Reduced
- Currently listed for $535,000
- Taxes of $7162
- Central air
- Basement
My guess is that potential buyers smell desperation here and are low-balling the hell out of them.
hahhaahahahaha lady groove just bought that same master bedroom set at target for our guest bedroom. had her take it back didnt like the cheap feel of it.
back to the property, why hasn’t it sold? its a good area, some spaces look tight but manageable, it has a lot of potential.
i wonder if it has flooding or foundation problems (looking at the six area rugs in the basement).
i wonder if it being to close to a bar has a negitive spin on it.
the 2006 price seems high but its a nice hood close to transportation, bars, and food.
Its getting a lot closer to the magic number of $521,250, which allows conforming financing with 20% down.
Sure a 105k downpayment is a lot of money and few have it but I’d bet there are some lenders still doing 2nd mortgages out there?
“i wonder if it being to close to a bar has a negitive spin on it.”
What bar? 2+ blocks to any bar I know about, notwithstanding the (bizarre, imo) reference to Brownstone (really? Brownstone is *that* *cool*???).
I pass this house all the time. Why hasn’t it sold?? Well, I don’t like that fact the it is right across the street from an office bldg with a LOT of traffic. The corner has a lot of traffic, & the street it is on has a lot of traffic, esp. on CUBS game days. And it site up right against the back porch/stairs of another condo bldg. I lived up against the back stairs/porch of a bldg & it was EXTREMELY noisy, especially from the drunks coming home at night, the idiots using cell phones late at night on the porch & the people smoking on the back porch. Smoke came right into my window. Maybe that’s why.
anon,
Brownstone is the new wicker park bar havent ya heard? its actually nice and price used to be reasonable (been two years since i was there). i loved the late thirty divorced women constantly hitting on me there.
ChiTown,
you can say the same of almost every lakeview super dense street as this place.
“Brownstone is the new wicker park bar havent ya heard? its actually nice and price used to be reasonable (been two years since i was there). i loved the late thirty divorced women constantly hitting on me there.”
Guess I’m just not cool enough.
dont worry anon your still cool enough for O’Donnavans on irving
I think the problem is that if you spend $500+ on a house in Chicago you don’t want it to look like a piece of SHITE from the outside. Seriously, this place has ZERO curb appeal. If this house were in any place other than this, it would be like $60,000… Ok, so I exaggerate. But I am from Wisconsin where you can obviously get a lot of house for your money. If my parents pulled up to this place and I owned it, I’d turn off the lights and hide in shame. It’s gross and embarrassing.
This is slightly off topic- but since it’s my blog I’ll post it anyway:
But if you want to get an idea of what things are selling for in the suburbs versus the city right now check out this week’s House Hunters on HGTV. This particular episode aired last night but they always re-air them the same week.
It was a younger married couple with a couple of dogs and cats who wanted to buy and were looking at brick bungalows in Berwyn. Budget was around $200,000.
They bought a darling place with stained glass and original woodwork that was listed at $199,000 (I don’t remember right off what they actually paid for it.) Had a two car garage and a small backyard. No granite or stainless steel in the kitchen though (ha!).
Yes- it’s Berwyn. But they also said at the end of the episode they now had more room and the monthly payment was $300 LESS than their rent for their Chicago apartment (which was a two bedroom- but they didn’t say what neighborhood.)
Berwyn is on the Metra line and commuters can get downtown in like 10 minutes.
“HGTV & Berwyn”
I too saw the episode and was surprised by how far the dollar amount did in fact go. I have a few co-workers who live in Berwyn and love the proximity to the city, easy commute via metra, and the amount of SF you get for the dollar.
the son of svengoolie put a curse on Berwyn and it’s been hard to shake.
CH: You’re revealing your age!
I think these HGTV buyers are too young to know who the son of svengoolie is- so I think the significance of Berwyn is missing on them. ha! ha!
Here’s a clip that’s a snippet for those of you who aren’t Chicago natives. The son of svengoolie was on local tv in the early 1980s. He had a running joke about Berwyn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchkTcnE5Jw
This house looks just like mine on the outside; just a simple frame cottage, plain jane on the outside, gut rehabbed on the inside. The layout is like mine, 2 BRs upstairs, 2 baths. I can’t even believe the brown and blue wall paint is like mine, but I did mine 10 years ago, and it’s time to bring it up to date again. (Jon, you hurt my feelings!)
Why isn’t it selling? Because even given the neighborhood it’s in, it’s still way overpriced by about $100k. It can’t compete with new (albeit often crappy) construction. A frame cottage is a frame cottage. Silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and all that… Is the lot worth $500k? because for many, this would be considered a tear-down only a few years ago.
When I see stuff like this, I’m glad I bought when I did, back in the late 90’s, before the insanity. Of course, I sometimes wish I could have dumped this place for double what I paid at the bubble height, but no matter what, I’ll never be underwater here…
“the son of svengoolie put a curse on Berwyn and it’s been hard to shake”
beeeeeeerwwwwwyyyyn 🙁 Ch you beat me to that! gotta love rubber chickens.
sabrina,
as cute and quaint as berwyn once was it isnt the berwyn of 15 years ago, the demograpics there have changed and is mirroring how cicero changed.
that svengoolie vid is great. wow, he is all over youtube (unlike the gigglesnort hotel, sadly)
“Is the lot worth $500k? because for many, this would be considered a tear-down only a few years ago.”
Not anymore it ain’t. There’s a 35′ lot (with a teardown two-flat) in the Bell area that’s listed for $500k and not moving. The location isn’t great (b/t a small apartment building and an o/o 3-flat), but still.
It’s really, really too bad that so many houses like this got torn down–I don’t miss the ones on Damen and other bus-route streets, but the ones on teh side streets were the entry-level houses that have now turned to more-expensive condos. Sux for the community.
They still use Bohemian air conditioners in Berwyn–a rocking chair in the gangway?
ChiTown is correct. this place is WAY too close to the private decks [ie, BACK PORCHES!] of the crappy condo building next door. every time i pass by, i can’t help but think that it’s one flicked cigarette away from going up in flames.
Sabrina,
there are still cheap and (relatively) safe places to buy in the city. one can find some nice places on the southeast side. a friend took me to a few festivals on the east side this summer, and, granted, some neighborhoods are nicer than others, it’s not too horrible an area—and can be an alternative to places like berwyn.
check out:
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/9828-S-Muskegon-Avenue_Chicago_IL_60617_1112675505
or
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/10942-S-Ave-D_Chicago_IL_60617_1108749608
This hasn’t sold because it’s just outside the Bell and Blaine school district.
maybe this place hasn’t sold because you feel like you’ve stepped into track housing in McHenry. This is sterile, there is no character and it’s depressing. I don’t want to spend 500k to be depressed.