The chitownpropertygroup team has always provided top notch relocation services both into and out of Chicago, and this relationship will only strengthen our relocation service offering.

So if you are moving to or from Chicago, The City Of Broad Shoulders, we would be honored to assist in making your relocation as seamless as possible.

The first option we added is something I’m especially proud of. You can now search for pre-foreclosures and bank owned listings in EVERY SINGLE MARKET WE SERVICE! We can do this by looking at two sets of data, both of which are provided by the MLS. First, we look at all of the features that are provided by the MLS for each property. If there’s a feature that denotes that the property is a short sale, is in pre-foreclosure, has had a notice of default filed against the owner, etc, then we mark it as a pre-foreclosure. If there’s a feature that says that the property has been foreclosed upon, is a lender / bank owned listing, is an REO, etc, then we mark it as bank owned.

If the MLS doesn’t provide features that say whether or not a property is distress, or if the agent just forgot to say that it’s in distress, we do something super special. We spent a very long time developing a proprietary algorithm to analyze the descriptions of each property, and for each of the literally millions of active listings in our database, we’ve run the descriptions through our algorithm to find out if it’s a pre-foreclosure or bank owned listing. We’ve run extensive tests, and our positive rate for matching these descriptions is near 99.5%! We toss out properties where the listing agent says things like “this house is not a preforeclosure” or “this house is better than a bank-owned listing.” The result is something we’re really proud of, and it’s something that we can confidently say that no one else has.

We know that there are still going to be small issues with this though, so we set up an email address that you can send property descriptions to so that our system will get better. That’s right – it’s ALIIIIVE! We will be continually training and refining our algorithm, so the more listings you send in that it either should have matched but didn’t or shouldn’t have matched but did, the better our system will get! We will manually review and classify each submission that comes through to ensure that our pre-foreclosure / foreclosure description analyzer is the very best there is!

Design your own custom Chicago foreclosure search.

Price Adjustments
Price drops are all too common in today’s marketplace. The first feature gives you the ability to search for properties by percentage of price drop within a defined number of days.

Foreclosures
The second is based on a recent MLS change that requires pre-foreclosures (short sales) or foreclosures to be identified in the MLS. As a result, you can now search for either situation.

The number of new features and improvements is too lengthy to cover completly but I encourage you to try out the new and improved search.

Site Plan

Northern Elevation

Despite the green focus of the developer, the major issues seem to be that the building is too high and the planned number of units is too dense for the surrounding neighborhood. We will wait and see if the plan continues to change. One thing is for sure, regardless of whether the development is built, nothing will interfere with my dinner at Rose Angelis, located right across the street.

A few of the key provisions that will most directly impact the consumer include…

• A permanent increase of conforming loan limits to $625,500 from the current $417,000 in high-cost areas.
• A first time home buyer credit of 10% of purchase price but not to exceed $7,500. Important to recognize that this is really an interest free loan to be paid back over 15 years.
• A grant to states to purchase and restore foreclosed properties.

And one other provision that may interest you…

Buried deep within the legislation (page 690) is a change in the capital gains tax exemption rule. Prior to the new legislation, if a homeowner lived in the home as their primary residence for 2 of the past 5 years they could claim an exemption on capital gains of up to $250,000 if filing singly or $500,000 if filing jointly. Under the new legislation, the exemption is based on a ratio of occupancy as primary residance over the total ownership of the property. The Mortgage Reports discusses the calculation and the impact on home sellers.

I came home late this afternoon as a light summer shower began to roll through the area. I looked out my back door and saw not one, but two rainbows arching over the city. My young daughter, who is very into princesses and enchanted lands, and I ran up to our roof-top deck to get a better look and snap the photo above. Look closely and you can see that the lower rainbow ends at the antennas atop the John Hancock building.

Our new team website is now live. Our high-level requirements were for a very simple, clean, crisp, contemporary, easily changeable site dominated by local content.

We have a lot of tweaking to do but are very pleased with version 1.0 of the site.

First, I have been extremly busy assisting clients in the purchase and sale of real estate in Chicago. This is my primary duty and job.

Second, my business partner and I have been working on the launch of our new team website. Having had several convoluted agent template websites my goal was to produce a simple website … simplicity. Sometimes simple takes longer than expected. I look forward to introducing you to the new site.

And a Chicago Run and Bike flyer as well.

Always popular items for the front, or side (stainless steel owners), of the fridge.

Real estate is a local business. I am glad my brokerage supports and invests in this concept.

The team just began marketing a stunning condo located at 1001 W. Madison, one of the West Loop’s premier buildings. Located at Morgan and Madison, the building is in the middle of all the action steps to shops, and dining.

Update: As I experiment with the new home search, one of the best features is the incorporation of Google Street View. Check out the feature on my listing at 2430 N. Southport. Scroll down and click on the Maps tab to see Street View in action.

True to the article title, when in Chicago, you can be in two places at once. As an example, Lincoln Park is not a neighborhood but rather a community area (8007). It contains a number of neighborhoods within it’s boundaries including Lathrop Homes, Wrightwood Neighbors, Park West, West De Paul, RANCH Triangle, Sheffield Neighbors, and Old Town Triangle.

When working with buyer and seller clients, I often find myself in a discussion of neighborhood vs. community area in order to more fully understand their requirements.