SVRPaul's Blog: New Chicago Homes - New Chicago Condominiums

It was bound to start and we predicted that it would happen well over a year ago. New Home builders in Chicago that would start offering great incentives for potential buyers to purchase their homes. Through years of experience working with new home sales there are several things we have learned and some of these are:

New Home Builders Are in the business to sell Homes

New home builders typically do not sit around on standing inventory and price their homes to see what will happen. They price their homes to sell and offer incentives so they can pay off their construction loans which are at a higher interest rate then your typical standard mortgage.

New Home Builders Don't get their advice from the Media or their Neighbors

They hire professionals to…

It's not too hard to pick up something from the media and hear doomsday news about the real estate industry. Generally, the media picks up a sensationalized story from a heavily speculated real estate market such as Arizona, Las Vegas, California or Florida real estate and pinpoints some dread story of a homeowner that paid too much money for their real estate in 2005. Now the prices have gone down (for real estate they more then likely paid too much for to begin with) resulting in the homeowner losing valuable equity and their great investment in real estate not being such a great investment for the short term.

These same real estate markets all seem to have something in common - an increase in prices due to speculation by real estate investors that…

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?

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:…

Barrington IL, located aproximately 35 miles from downtown Chicago offers unique real estate in an area that maintains a rural character. The area is established and one of the goals of the local governments is to preserve and maintain it's natural history. In an area with more then 350 homes listed in the National Historic Preservation district, it's quite surprising to just how much new construction there is in the Barrington area. There are currently three larger new communities being built by national builders in the Barrington area and a multitude of smaller builders that are offering new construction.

One such builder offers over 27 different floorplans with aproximately 5 to 6 different elevations for new homes in South Barrington. Five of these…