North Shore Views

Archive for August, 2010

Fall Festivals on the North Shore

Summer may be coming to a close, but there are still lots of opportunities to get out with the family and enjoy some fun fall festivals on the North Shore. Here’s a round-up of festivals in September and October 2010:

Cruise the Backlot

Village Green, 5201 Oakton, Skokie
September 15,  6-9 pm

Browse 75 classic cars and enjoy food, fun and entertainment on the Village Green.

ShermerFest

Village Green Park, 1320 Shermer Rd., Northbrook
September 19

Enjoy an old-fashioned day at the park, with an antique car show, music and children’s activities.

Highwood Last Call Art Fair

Intersection of Sheridan Rd. and Highwood Ave., Highwood
September 25-26, 10 am – 5 pm

Live music, food and activities for the kids. Free admission. Call 847-926-4300 for more info.

Ridge Road Fall Fest

Ridge Rd. between Lake and Wilmette Avenues, Wilmette
September 25, 10 am – 1 pm

Held in conjunction with St. Joseph Parish Oktoberfest, the Ridge Road Fall Fest features free pony rides, moon bounce and other children’s activities. The Oktoberfest (corner of Ridge Rd. and Lake Ave.) goes til 4 pm with an antique market, games, contests and entertainment. At 6:00 pm there is an adults-only party with German food and beer, oompah music and dance music by PopRocks.

Deerfield Historical Society Fall Festival

517 Deerfield Rd, Deerfield
September 26, 12-4 pm

A family-friendly event with a classic car show, book sale, craft demonstrations, food and live entertainment. Call 847-948-0680 for more info.

WFamily Harvest Festival

Westfield Old Orchard, Skokie (near L.L. Bean and Crate and Barrel stores)
October 23, 12-5 pm

Pumpkin Patch, corn and hay maze, games, rides, crafts and entertainment, including an appearance by Curious George.

Tags: fall festivals

St. Joseph Catholic Church

Driving west on Lake Avenue from downtown Wilmette, you can’t miss the majestic facade of St. Joseph Catholic Church . St. Joseph Church is the oldest religious congregation and one of two Catholic churches in the Village of Wilmette (the other is St. Francis Xavier in east Wilmette). It was founded in 1845 by German Catholic farmers who settled in the area once known as Gross Point, on the western edge of Wilmette.

The first church building was a log cabin built in 1843 on the northwest corner of Ridge Rd. and Lake Ave., near the site of the present cemetery. The log cabin was replaced by a frame church in 1850 and this was replaced by a large brick church in 1869. Due to poor construction, that building only lasted sixty years. The current Art Deco style church was built on the southeast corner of Ridge and Lake and dedicated in 1939. After World War II an annex and convent was added.

St. Joseph School, which is located across the street, was built in the late 1930’s but was forced to close its doors in 1986 as a result of post-baby boom demographic shifts. It was reopened ten years later starting with the preschool. By 1998 the entire school had been renovated and updated to serve children from preschool through 8th grade.

If you’re not Catholic the most notable thing about St. Joseph (besides its imposing structure) is their annual Oktoberfest, held on a Saturday each fall in conjunction with the Ridge Road Fall Festival. There’s an outdoor antiques fair, which has great deals (especially at the end of the day) and a family festival with games, contests and entertainment. The adult party starts at dusk with a traditional German dinner complete with oompah music, followed by dancing under the stars.

Tags: Oktoberfest, St. Joseph Catholic Church

Selling Your North Shore Home? The First Week is Crucial

If you are planning to sell your North Shore home, you should read this article in the Wall Street Journal.

The article cites data from discount real estate broker, Redfin, which underscores how crucial it is to price your home correctly right out of the gate, rather than “testing” the market at a higher price for a few weeks. According to Redfin, new listings get 4 times as many online visits in the first week as they do a month later, which is when most people consider taking their first price reduction. Over 90% of home buyers begin their search online, so you don’t want to risk “missing the market” by overpricing your home.

If you are considering selling and would like to know what your house is worth in today’s market, I would be happy to provide you with a complimentary CMA (competitive market analysis). Give me a call at 847-687-5957 or email me. You can also get a quick, over-the-net home value analysis here.

Related Articles

• The 5 Pitfalls of Overpricing your House
• Do You Really Want to Sell Your House?

Tags: Pricing your home to sell

Illinois Association of Realtors Announces Decline in Home Sales in July

The Illinois Association of Realtors announced today that residential real estate sales in the nine county Chicago area fell for the first time in a year for the month of July (single family homes and condos). This was driven by the end of the tax credit (June 30), the weak job market and the uncertainty around the economic recovery.

While sales declines for the North Shore are comparable to the greater Chicago area (-19.1% vs. July 2009), the picture is not as bleak if you look only at single family detached homes, which decreased only 11% in July. The good news for the North Shore market is that the median price is up 21% for all single family homes and up 8% for detached single family homes.

Here’s how the trends compare:

Illinois

Home Sales  -29.7%

Median Price  -4.3%

Chicago area

Home Sales -25.0%

Median Price -9.6%

City of Chicago

Home Sales -19.5%

Median Price -19.8%

North Shore*

Home Sales -19.1%

Median Price +21.0%

*Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, Northfield, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Glenview, Highland Park, Lake Forest

Tags: July home sales data, North Shore sales trends

End of August Festivals

Summer may be winding down but there are still plenty of fairs and festivals going on around the North Shore. Here’s what’s going on through the end of August:

Wilmette

Summerfest at Beth Hillel Congregation on Saturday, August 22 from 11 am to 4 pm. Live music, food, children’s activities, Israeli dancing and appearances by alumni Blackhawks players. Free admission.
3220 Big Tree Lane, Wilmette. Call 847-256-1213 for more information.

Evanston

American Craft Exposition. 150 juried craftspeople will exhibit baskets, ceramics, furniture, glass, jewlry and mixed media crafts. Friday, August 27 from 10 am to 8 pm Saturday and Sunday, August 28-29 from 11 am to 5 pm.  Tickets: $12 in advance; $15 at the door (good all 3 days). Proceeds benefit breast and ovarian cancer research.
Northwestern University’s Henry Crown Sports Pavilion, 2311 Campus Drive.

Skokie

Backlot Bash. A summer tradition featuring live music on the main stage at Oakton Avenue, amusement park/carnival, classic auto show, sidewalk sale and teen activities. Friday, August 27 from 6 to 10 pm, Saturday, August 28 from 11 am to 10 pm and Sunday, August 29 from noon to 8 pm. Lincoln at Oakton in downtown Skokie. You can see the schedule of events here.

Highland Park

Port Clinton Art Festival featuring works by 260  juried artists, live music, children’s activities and Taste of Highland Park. August 28-29 from 10 am to 6 pm. Admission free. Port Clinton Square, 600 Central Ave.

Tags: fairs and festivals

The Odds of Selling Your Winnetka Home

If you are planning to sell your Winnetka home, chances are your real estate agent has shown you a CMA (comparable market analysis) to support her pricing recommendation.  Basically, a CMA shows you what similar homes in your neighborhood have sold for in the past few months, so that you know where you should price your home to get it sold.

I have found that a helpful supplement to a CMA is an analysis of how many real buyers there are at each price point. For purposes of this  exercise a real buyer is the same as a sold home. Thinking about it this way enables us to get our minds around how many real buyers there are out there in a particular price point, because if someone purchased a home they are certainly a real buyer. Taken together with the number of homes listed at this price, you can calculate the odds of selling your home within the next, say, six months. It’s an easy way to see the level of activity for every price point;  it’s also a good tool for determining your pricing strategy. It provides a pretty compelling picture of how moving from one price tier to another could dramatically improve (or hurt) your odds of selling.

Take the following as an example. The chart shows price tiers for Winnetka single family homes in $100,000 increments. Dividing the real buyers (homes sold) by the number of homes currently on the market, you can get a good sense of your probability of selling, depending on which price tier your home falls into.

In Winnetka, a home that is appropriately priced within the $900-999,000 tier has a very good chance of selling within a six month period (100% according to this chart). A home between $1,000-1,999,999 also has a very good probability of selling (75%). But get over $2,000,000 and the odds decrease significantly because there are more than three times as many homes for sale as there are buyers.

What that says is that if your home is priced in the low $2,000,000’s, you may want to consider rethinking your pricing strategy. Bringing it down to the next tier may be what it takes to get it sold. I recently advised a client whose house had languished for a year on the low end of that $2,000-2,999,999 tier to consider bringing it down to $1,999,999. Once they did, the house sold within two weeks.

Tags: Home prices

Where’s the Best Place to Live on Chicago’s North Shore?

Sometimes when I work with clients who are new to the area they will ask me, “So, what do you think is the best place to live on the North Shore?”

Even if it were legal for me to answer this question, which it’s not, I could not answer it. That’s because, like beauty, “best place to live” is in the eye of the beholder, and what’s best for me, isn’t going to be best for someone else.

What I can do is help my clients discover their best place to live.

The first step is finding out what’s important to them:
If they have children, schools will usually be at the top of the list. If their kids are into sports they may want to be near playing fields or the ice rink.
Do they commute to the city and want to be within walking distance of the train, or is easy access to the highway more important?
Would they rather have a big piece of property with privacy and quiet or do they prefer a more neighborhood-y feel?

Once I understand what’s important to them, I will take them on my signature Tour of the Shore, where I show them the communities and neighborhoods that fit their criteria. We visit the schools, parks, downtown areas and amenities. I will show them 2-3 representative homes in each community that fall in their price range, and we discuss why their budget will buy more in one area than another, or why two very similar houses have such different price tags.

But beyond housing prices and school scores, it’s critical to get a FEEL for the communities and neighborhoods that you are considering. Here are some of the ways I recommend getting a feel for a neighborhood or community, so you can find the one that will be best for you:

• Have your agent show you what you can buy with your budget in each community. Talk about the trade-offs and what you gain or give-up depending on the community or neighborhood.

• Compare the schools by looking at reports and test scores that can be found online. Then go to the school and sit in front at 3:15 when the bell rings at the end of the day. You will see what happens when the kids come streaming out. Are parents waiting for them? Is it a neighborhood school where they can walk or ride their bikes home or do they have to ride the bus? Do they seem happy and relaxed?

• Observe the neighborhood at different times of day. What are people doing? Are they out and about or locked in their houses?  Is it noisy or quiet? Is it well lit after dark?

• What’s the traffic like? If you are concerned the house you like may be on a busy street, you should go there during rush hour to get the “worst case” scenario. Do people drive fast through the neighborhood, or are they mindful that there are children around?

• Talk to the neighbors and ask them what they like most and least about the neighborhood.

• Also, go sit at the local Starbucks or the park and watch people come and go. Would you feel comfortable with them as neighbors?

There are lots of great communities and neighborhoods on the North Shore. You may have to make some trade-offs based on what you can afford, so you do need to be clear on your priorities. I remember when we moved back here from Colorado, I found a house I really liked in one community but my husband pointed out that, because the lots were large and the houses so spread out, there didn’t seem to be many kids close by. Knowing how social both our kids were, I had to admit this wasn’t going to work for them, so we picked a neighborhood where the houses were close together and there were always tons of children around. Even though I loved that rambling farmhouse with the big oak trees, I have to admit that the house and neighborhood we chose has worked much better for us as a family.

Tags: choosing a neighborhood, home buying tips

North Shore Market Update – July 2010

After a few months of increased home sales, July saw a decrease in sales on Chicago’s North Shore.

This was not surprising because the tax credit expired June 30. The towns which had the biggest decreases were the ones where the tax credit had had the most positive  impact: towns where home prices tend to be under $700,000. Although unit sales were down this month, the good news is that prices are up modestly vs. July of last year and time on market is down.

The towns that showed the best performance overall were Wilmette and Lake Forest. Wilmette had a 15% increase in unit sales and a 15% increase in median selling price, as well as a 4% decrease in time on market. Lake Forest doubled in unit sales from July of last year and decreased in market time, while prices stayed flat.

The weakest performer for the month of July was Highland Park. Sales were down 22% vs. 2009, median selling price declined 27% and days on market increased 4%.

Evanston’s average days on market is down to 69 days while several other markets are down to five months. Kenilworth time on market is still just under one year due to its high average price point.

North Shore Market Update – July 2010

Source: MRED LLC- Single family detached homes – Deemd reliable but not guaranteed

Tags: North Shore market data, North Shore real estate trends, North Shore sales trends, Real estate

Wilmette Home Sales by Elementary School District

Here’s a comparison of home sales activity for each of Wilmette’s four elementary school districts. The data is for the six months February-July 2010 and is for single family detached homes:

Source: MREDLLC- Deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Tags: home sales by school district

Which North Shore Price Points Are Moving?

The chart below shows the two most active price points for each of nine towns on the North Shore.

Despite the crummy economy, the $1,000,000-1,900,000 price point is the most active for all but three towns. Interesting is the wide disparity between the first and second highest selling price points, especially in Northfield and Glenview.

And confirmation that Kenilworth continues to be the poshest and priciest suburb on the North Shore, with  63% of sales over $1,000,000.

Most Active Price Points – 1st Half 2010 (thousands)

Source: MRED LLC- Deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Data is for single family detached homes.

Tags: North Shore home prices