Foreclosure Alert: What’s the Land Worth? 1517 W. Birchwood
What is land worth in East Rogers Park?
That’s the question as this 1908-era single family home at 1517 W. Birchwood, that apparently needs a total rehab, goes to foreclosure auction this week.
No one has been enticed by the low “as-is” price apparently.
Here’s the listing:
GREAT OPPORTUNITY. EXCELLENT EAST ROGERS PARK LOCATION – JUST 2 BLOCKS FROM LAKE MICHIGAN! LARGE HOUSE W/ INCREDIBLE SPACE ON OVERSIZE LOT (36X150).
PROPERTY NEEDS GUT REHAB. PRICE REFLECTS THE CONDITION. ADVANCED FORECLOSURE PENDING (HURRY!!) / 3RD PARTY APPROVAL REQUIRED, SOLD ‘AS-IS’ – BRING YOUR HIGHEST AND BEST OFFERS.
Re/Max City Realtors has the listing. See the listing here. (No interior pictures available.)
1517 W. Birchwood: 4 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 2346 square feet, 2 car garage
- Sold in June 1996 for $110,000
- Sold in October 1997 for $200,000
- Lis pendens filed in April 2008
- Currently listed “as-is” for $299,500
- Foreclosure auction price this week of $518,838
- Taxes of $1,792
Very big rehab job here-bring lots of money to make this house habitable and halfway energy efficient. The heat bills on places like this are bears!
This place is in a very questionable location, a section of RP that is too close to Howard St. where we have experienced way too many shootings and too much gang violence this year. A good security system is baseline. In spite of a lot of development in recent years, and the vast improvement of the south end of Rogers Park, this pocket has not improved.
On the good side, you have many really involved, concerned neighbors around this area who purchased homes and condos in this area and are working very hard to improve the area. Great people. There is also a new el station at Howard, very beautiful, and the Dominick’s and other shopping close by.
This house sounds cheap, but it needs so much work you might want to get it cheaper. But the prices around here are at last dropping back to levels that can attract moderate income buyers who will work to improve the area.
I think it’s overpriced; you can buy a livable house in Evanston for just a bit more than this without the traffic* and crime hassles of Rogers Park – admittedly the taxes in Evanston would be three times these.
*Sheridan Rd is insane up here, essentially an expressway with stop lights, it really hurts the neighborhood in not having a Lake Shore Drive and park extension to make the area more desirable.
“This house sounds cheap”
Half a million dollars for a crapy old house in Rogers Park close to Howard St. looks cheap to you?!! Apparently there still are a lot of delusional people out there.
under contract per MLS.
I thought about looking at this but i agree with Laura this location is dicey. Too bad – nice house on a big lot.
Most of us in Edgwater and Rogers Park are opposed to the Lake Shore Drive extension because the offset is just too much a sacrifice, and we have voted heavily against it in two referendums. It would cost us our extensive beaches, a neighborhood feature we love and that many of us buy here in order to have.
An extension will destroy our beaches and bring more traffic, not less. The U.S. is already overpaved, and this road would cost $400 Million at least- money that could and should be used to make essential infrastructure repairs to existing streets and roads in Chicago.
About this location- remember Rogers Park has more than one neighborhood. Birchwood is at the north end of Rogers Park, where we have the most problems. South of Farwell into Edgewater-east of Ashland is where the biggest improvements have been made. East of Sheridan Road is mostly pretty good. Just west of Clark St is dicey. Anything too close to Clark&Howard, or to Howard, is problematic, because of the number of bad buildings harboring bad elements nearby.
“bad elements” is code in Rogers Park for black folk.
nd – Or it could just mean gangs and criminals (who wants to live near violate crimes and drugs?), I’m sure Laura isn’t a Notre Dame administrator, so don’t assume it was against black folk.
Aren’t some of the beaches in Rogers Park private anyway? If so, few suffer the drawbacks implied above.
I’m loath to side with the property owners up there whose interest is in maintaining their own private beach. While Lake Shore Drive is an unpleasant neighbor, I think something needs to be done with the lakefront up there either way.
How about spending $500 million on improving the existing public transit options up there? That could go a long way to making the trains and buses more reliable and pleasant to ride. If you don’t want to be stuck in traffic in Chicago, there’s a really simple solution…don’t drive. I don’t, and I get by just fine. Granted, some people need a car to commute out to areas where public transit isn’t an option, but that applies mainly to people living along the lake who need to go west to suburban office parks…I doubt people driving from Edgewater to Schaumburg for work every morning account for the bulk of the traffic problems on Sheridan north of LSD. I’d imagine it’s mostly car-addicted jerks who think it would be great if everyone ELSE took public transit so they could have the roads all to themselves for their commute to Evanston or some other part of town with plenty of public transit options.
Adding more roads doesn’t ease congestion, it just shifts more people away from public transit and over to driving until the congestion gets just as bad as it was before. I didn’t move to Chicago to see it turn into Atlanta or Houston or LA. I moved here because it’s a walkable city with decent public transit. If you want to live in a car-centric American city, you have tons of other places to chose from.
“bad elements” is NOT code for black folks.
It is code for people with rap sheets longer than LSD, for moms with 18 fatherless kids, for gangbangers, for prostitutes, for the riffraff hanging out in front of the liquor stores on Clark, for the gangs of varied ethnicity selling dope and hanging out on Howard st and Morse.
We like black folks or white or any minority just fine. We have large numbers of minorities here and most are moderate to middle income people who want a good deal on their housing.
We’re just sick of unplaceable refugees whose criminal records or overly large families on welfare, and bad ways keep them from being placed anywhere else, being dumped on us. And we’re sick of being the city’s designated dumping ground for these types of people. We don’t care if they’re white, black, or whatever- we’re long tired of our neighborhood, with its charm and trees and beaches and incredible stock of fine old housing, being the dumping ground for bums and lowlifes of all sorts.
Dave, I am quite sure Rogers Park does not have any private beaches. My rugby team at LU used to run the beach from campus up to Evanston.
About the private beaches- there are only a couple, and there is considerable argument as to whether the “owners” really own them. We are working on establishing whether or not those two or three beaches are actually public and perhaps were illegally partitioned off, and it is very possible that these “private” beaches are really public and that cordoning them off is a violation of our riparian rights.
We have a continuous beach in RP that stretches from Albion clear up to Chase- about 7 blocks, with no interruption, and it is one of the joys of living around here. It would be a sore blow to the neighborhood were anything to be done to harm it, like an extension of LSD, or a marina. Edgewater has the Edgewater Beach, Thorndale Beach, and Berger Park- all of which would be damaged by the extension. Additionally, high rises fronting the beach would lose access- something they paid a premium for- and would be subject to highway noise. The public would lose access to these beaches.
In 2006, Edgewater and Rogers Park voted against an extension and marina ovewhelmingly- 88% of voters opposed the extension. In Evanston, 80% of affected voters opposed it. Another referendum, for Edgewater voters only, was on the ballot Nov 4th, but worded so weirdly that many people didn’t understand it. It still garnered 60% opposing the extension.
Problem is, Laura, many of those failed condo conversions will end up housing the elements you seek to avoid. Rogers Park will suffer a serious setback from the bubble excesses. A “normal” market would have likely resulted in continuous (albeit slower) improvements to RP due to the positives you have noted many times. Due to the boom and bust, RP as a “dumping ground” will likely resume.
Laura, welcome to the joys of city living. Not all neighborhoods in Chicago are like Lincoln Park. I did five years hard time in the RP and I would never return.
how about a skyway type extension right over RP? that would be crazy, but they could make some money on tolls.
To heck with the beaches. They mostly only serve locals and are only usable a few months of the year. Extend LSD I say!
Plus LSD can peacefully co-exist with beaches, just look at all of the beaches south of here.
Hurray Laura, I agree with everything you say! Let the rest of the posters ‘enjoy’ Lincoln Park, I’ll take Rogers Park any day!! LP: too many transient college grads, too many PC chain stores & eateries, too far to beaches, everyone is just one carbon copy of each other. RP: wide diversity in ethnicities & income levels, still many Mom & Pop eateries, gorgeous uncrowded beaches & BEST OF ALL a devoted & strong community spirit! True Chicago city living.
As to extending the lakefront, besides spending huge amts of taxpayer moolah, I don’t see the beauty in marinas & boat slips, I only see the elites enjoying their watercraft at the expense of the working man. No thanks.
Actually, these failed condo projects will end up housing a better bunch of renters….if, and only if, we can enforce the codes among landlords here. We have had many noisy, contentious meetings around here concerning certain problem properties and their owners, and have never received cooperation from our local alderman in getting these places cleaned up.
Problem here is that we have an alderman who is every slumlord’s best friend. Be his friend, and you are guaranteed total non-enforcement of reasonable building codes. Compare our neighborhood to Edgewater. Now, 10 years ago, east Edgewater was in still worse condition. More crime, more gangs, more drugs,more trash on the lawns, more bad buildings.
But these days, Edgewater is the 2nd safest nabe in the city, even though the demographics are so similar to those of RP. What’s the diff? Edgewater has a huge number of low income tenants, but nothing like the problems. Maybe 5 bad buildings in all, which the 48th Ward alderman tracks very carefully and features on an online lists. She ENFORCES the building codes, and really rides herd on owners of buildings that generate problems.
Low income does not have to equal high crime. We have tens of thousands of low income people here in the city who produce no problems. Most don’t- the project at Ardmore and Broadway has no problems, being mostly elderly and disable tenants. Neither do scores of other buildings in Edgewater. You can usually locate all your problems in a relative handful of buildings. But you need political leadership that is totally committed to your cause and will stand behind you in getting these problems eradicated. Neighbor’s repeated complaints and other actions were finally sufficient to get 5 particularly noisome buildings in RP into housing court, and the result was the court-ordered sale of all 5 (they had the same horrid ownership), that are now rehabbed into decent rentals.
LOL, bring your highest and best prices. I grew up in RP and Birchwood was kinda funky back then. Fast forward 25 years and Birchwood is still kinda funky. That’s one crazy price.
I was looking for investment property up there about five years ago and thought I’d ask one of the patrolling CPD dudes what he thought of the neighborhood. He chuckled and said “I wish I could tell you”. I decided to buy elsewhere based on the asking prices and that subtle hint from the cop.
Laura’s right though, there are some nice areas in RP, but the price would have to be compelling for me to drop some money at this address.
Someone surely brought their imagination to the table when they cooked up this price. Best of luck to ’em.