SVRPaul's Blog: All Categories

We had our eyes on a stunning $1,425,000 Barrington Hills home for a client ... here one day.. gone the next. There seems to have all of a sudden been a surge for homes in Barrington Hills as evidenced by our April of 2007 Barrington Hills Market Report.

According to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI), 4 homes in Barrington Hills closed escrow in April of 2006 for an average price of $805,625. In April of 2007, 5 homes closed escrow at an average price of $674,600... obviously a pretty big decline in the average selling price in a year over year monthly comparison but with the wide variety of Barrington Hills Real Estate for sale, it's nothing worthy enough for a fear headline in the Chicago Tribune and here is why:

Four Barrington…

A new $3 Billion dollar network system being built by Motorola Inc. and operated by Sprint Nextel Corp. will soon provide the Chicagoland Region full time internet access for users... allowing users to log into the internet from downtown and staying online as they travel to the suburbs or vice versa with the same power as many broadband services used by many homes and offices.

Chicago will be one of the first three cities in the nation to get the new network and according to Sprint the new technology should start operating by the end of the year.

This would be a fantastic service for Las Vegas For users such as ourselves that use multiple services and have multiple fees for having wireless internet access in our home, office and for when we are out and…

The Chicago Plan Commission approved the design for The Spire by world renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. The new condominium project, if built, will be the nations tallest building at around 2,000 feet high and will be home to aproximately 1,200 new Chicago luxury condominiums soaring high above the Chicago Skyline.

Being approved by the Chicago Plan Commission is one hurdle of many more to come including actually building the proposed tower. Due to the soaring height, building costs will be enormous due to the increase in materials required for such a structure.

It's really quite an interesting project that makes us wonder how something like this is even possible to build. My biggest question --- who is going to clean the windows?

Barrington IL homes average a 4.68% increase in selling price for March of 2007 compared to March of 2006 according to information provided from the MLS of Northern Illinois.

Some notes before continuing: This is an overall analysis of Area 10 (60010 zip code) of detached homes from the local MLS and includes a pretty large area including the Villages of Barrington, Barrington Hills Real Estate, North Barrington, South Barrington Homes and Deer Park. The area is over 70 square miles and is approximately 35 miles from the Chicago loop. The report is an analysis of the overall Barrington area and obviously it should be noted that this is a report of actual homes that closed in March of 2007 in comparison to Barrington homes that closed in March of 2006.…

After a long and well organized campaign to convince the United States Olympic Committee that Chicago would be a better candidate for the 2016 Olympics then Los Angeles, The USOC today announced that it has selected Chicago over Los Angeles for it's bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

This is a major step in the process for selecting a city to host the 2016 Olympics by the International Olympic Committee and a huge accomplishment for the City of Chicago who has never hosted an Olympics before. Planning for this honor to represent the USOC began years ago with a firm commitment by Chicago City officials to revitalize areas of Chicago that needed a little help.

The revitalization of downtown areas has been nothing short of incredible and the side effect of this…

In our quest of keeping up with what is going on in the Residential real estate world and staying in tune with trends effecting the online residential real estate side of our business, we've come across several issues that effect not only residential real estate agents, but also the consumer.

Last year it was Zillow and the Zestimate.  Trust us, we had to more then once explain this system to several clients concerning the valuation of their homes... obviously much easier to do when the Zestimate was lower for a homeseller then when the Zestimate was higher then our valuation of a clients home.  We can tell you this... not once was the Zestimate close enough to use it as a price valuation in putting a home up for sale... our experience.  The absolute…

I was looking over some Broker/Client registration forms with a new home builder in the Chicagoland area and happened to flip over the back page. Three statements stand out and this is something that many new home buyers have a misconception about when beginning their search for a new Chicago home:

1) Builder acknowledges a single price policy.

2) Sales prices are not negotiable nor do they deviate for non-broker purchases.

3) Illinois real estate licensee must accompany and register the buyer on their first visit to the new home community.

Key highlights of this: Sales prices do not deviate for non-Broker purchases. You do not get a better price for a new home if you don't use a Real Estate Broker.

Since buyer representation is absolutely free for…

Chicago New home builders can be great to work with. We were just notified by a sales representative that a new home in Antioch that was supposed to close escrow just came back on the market because the original buyers could not obtain financing.

The key to this is this new Antioch community is sold out, the models are sold and the builder no longer has a sales office on site so instead of holding on to inventory, they would rather just sell it right away and get it off of the books. Estimated delivery is in June and the home features 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths with aproximately 2500 sq. ft. of living space.

Our last price sheet for this community showed the base price for this model at right under $380,000 base price. Current price for this opportunity:…