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Apartment/Condo/House Thread


pettie4sox

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QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 8, 2015 -> 05:47 PM)
Nice, my condo ( a rental now) is just SW of there, although I refer to it as Old Irving Park. ;)

So the place I'm now looking at is Irving Park and Spaulding (Kimball pretty much).

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QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Apr 8, 2015 -> 06:32 PM)
So the place I'm now looking at is Irving Park and Spaulding (Kimball pretty much).

 

I think I know exactly what building that is. I had some interest in it 10 years ago, but never actually went in and checked it out.

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  • 2 weeks later...
QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Apr 19, 2015 -> 10:55 PM)
I finally have an accepted offer on the place near Irving Park and Kimball, pretty happy with the price and really happy to be moving on with a place that I really like and is completely within my budget.

Awesome!

 

Now LittleHurt has a near-onsite emergency maintenance guy for his property. ;)

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QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 13, 2015 -> 12:50 PM)
Finally selling our condo in the city, and it's a pretty unusual deal. We had the middle unit in a semi-typical three-unit Bucktown single-lot building (a duplex down, and two single-floor units). Had been renting out our unit for a few years, but current lease ended at the end of Feb and we wanted to sell now.

 

Investor made us an offer on our place, but wanted to buy the whole building, so he wrote us a conditional offer: $1000 down in exchange for a two week negotiating window with the other units, and we keep the thousand if he doesn't close the deal. I contacted the other two units. The duplex down had been trying to sell on and off, so she got an offer and took it too, with a closing target in June when her current renters are out. The third floor unit was owner-occupied, and hadn't said anything about wanting to sell, but they ended up deciding to go for it too, with a lease-back for six months while they look for a house (turns out they'd been debating it anyway). Inspections are underway now, we get first close, hopefully early April.

 

Bonus: its a cash offer, so commission is sale-side only, we save probably $8000 in commission costs.

 

Hope this all works!

 

The investor guy was confident they'd get their project approved, but a few days after the election, the Alderman pulled the plug. No deal. Figured that was possible, this was a hard thing to pull off. At least we got a total of $3000 in earnest money out of it, and a chance to get more up to 3% of listing price.

 

Back on the market a few days ago, already have had about 7 showings. And people asking for financials and condo association rules, which usually means they are serious. Seems the market is a lot stronger now than a few months ago, so maybe we get a higher offer anyway.

 

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QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 20, 2015 -> 08:23 AM)
The investor guy was confident they'd get their project approved, but a few days after the election, the Alderman pulled the plug. No deal. Figured that was possible, this was a hard thing to pull off. At least we got a total of $3000 in earnest money out of it, and a chance to get more up to 3% of listing price.

 

Back on the market a few days ago, already have had about 7 showings. And people asking for financials and condo association rules, which usually means they are serious. Seems the market is a lot stronger now than a few months ago, so maybe we get a higher offer anyway.

 

Last year there was a huge run-up in Spring before it corrected, looks like same will happen again (more than usual for the spring market).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Bought a house out in Vegas for my parents, as they have decided to move out to Las Vegas after being lifelong Chicagoans.

 

They are excited, but very frightened at the same time.

 

The Vegas real estate market has been tough. It's incredibly volatile - we've seen a 30% upward swing in the last 2 years and that is after a 40-50% upward swing from the bottom of the market in '11. To be frank, I did not thing it was especially wise to buy into this market, but I had no other real choice. My parents have large dogs like myself, so a rental was out of the question and they wanted a larger lot as well.

 

After a few months of looking, finally found something that checked off all the boxes. 1800 sq ft on a half acre in a solid location with no HOA and move-in ready at a reasonable price. Made a strong initial offer the same day I saw it because they claimed they already had one. They countered a few times but I just refused to budge. In the end, they accepted my offer.

 

The yard has desert landscaping at the moment (read: it is full of rocks), so I need to get some quotes to get them hauled away. Then we're going to landscape with a ton of native ground cover, shrubs, trees, etc. One exciting thing, the yard has a large in-ground pool, which neither of our current properties in Vegas have.

 

Now on to the stress of moving my parents out here and a baby on the way in July. Deep breaths...one thing at a time...

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Shack that's awesome, should help a lot with the baby having the parents around. Hopefully they enjoy the area and are in a great community! My parents literally just moved down to North Carolina for retirement and the people there are so much nicer than their neighbors in the NW burbs here, it makes such a difference for them.

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QUOTE (iamshack @ May 9, 2015 -> 10:53 AM)
Bought a house out in Vegas for my parents, as they have decided to move out to Las Vegas after being lifelong Chicagoans.

 

They are excited, but very frightened at the same time.

 

The Vegas real estate market has been tough. It's incredibly volatile - we've seen a 30% upward swing in the last 2 years and that is after a 40-50% upward swing from the bottom of the market in '11. To be frank, I did not thing it was especially wise to buy into this market, but I had no other real choice. My parents have large dogs like myself, so a rental was out of the question and they wanted a larger lot as well.

 

After a few months of looking, finally found something that checked off all the boxes. 1800 sq ft on a half acre in a solid location with no HOA and move-in ready at a reasonable price. Made a strong initial offer the same day I saw it because they claimed they already had one. They countered a few times but I just refused to budge. In the end, they accepted my offer.

 

The yard has desert landscaping at the moment (read: it is full of rocks), so I need to get some quotes to get them hauled away. Then we're going to landscape with a ton of native ground cover, shrubs, trees, etc. One exciting thing, the yard has a large in-ground pool, which neither of our current properties in Vegas have.

 

Now on to the stress of moving my parents out here and a baby on the way in July. Deep breaths...one thing at a time...

Sounds stressful but also once it all gets settled down, could be a pretty great situation. Good luck!

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  • 2 months later...

Closed June 9th, have been painting seemingly every day for a month, and we finally have 2 coats on the master bedroom, hallway, entryway, living room, dining room, family room and sunroom. So we can move in. I also put fresh paint on the ceilings.

 

Man, painting entire interior = so much harder than one bedroom :)

 

You have no idea how much longer it is to paint trim/windows until you start on it. Such a treat when you can actually start rolling on the walls.

 

 

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  • 6 months later...
QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:45 PM)
Alright so I'll be paying taxes for the first time soon on my condo, suggestions for fighting increases or anything like that?

 

I don't know where you live, but the heart of any tax appeal is your comps. Have other recent sales and what they went for to use as the basis for what your valuation should be.

 

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QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 13, 2015 -> 10:31 AM)
Closed June 9th, have been painting seemingly every day for a month, and we finally have 2 coats on the master bedroom, hallway, entryway, living room, dining room, family room and sunroom. So we can move in. I also put fresh paint on the ceilings.

 

Man, painting entire interior = so much harder than one bedroom :)

 

You have no idea how much longer it is to paint trim/windows until you start on it. Such a treat when you can actually start rolling on the walls.

One benefit of having a father-in-law who was a professional painter for 35 years is that he'll paint all of the "hard" stuff and can paint an entire room in an hour or two from cracking open the can to tools cleaned. He can cut perfect lines against ceilings etc. with just a couple of brush strokes.

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QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 2, 2016 -> 10:45 PM)
Alright so I'll be paying taxes for the first time soon on my condo, suggestions for fighting increases or anything like that?

 

I've become a quasi-expert on Cook county taxes between my multiple properties and helping my parents. Like someone else said, finding comparables is huge. If you go to the Cook County Assessor site, you can search your neighborhood for all properties in the same property class as yours. Find the most similar properties that have been assessed much lower than yours and submit the list to the county. Each township is only open for a month at a time, so keep an eye on the deadline and don't miss your chance or you are out of luck http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/Appeals/...-Deadlines.aspx

 

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