im selling my 1 bedroom condo in northrbook

[Husker]

Heck even here in Omaha, if you live in one of those new "loft condo's" rebuilt old buildings.. they are over 200K for a nice one brdroom. But you can get a nice 3 brd house in the 'burbs for 125K....location,location,location

[Doctor]

North Suburbs, South Suburbs, Mississippi, Nova Scotia, Omaha, California....etc.

You know, it doesn't and shouldn't really matter where one lives. The cost of living vs. the cost of housing is going to be relative no matter where you are. Yes, Northbrook is a nice area. Yes, Northbrook has nice homes. Does that mean it's better than ??????Plainfield? Who knows, it all depends on one's personal opinion.

OK, so you can get to the city faster.......oooooooooohh!!!! I can get to IN, IA, MO, MN faster. Plainfield is on top of 355, 55, 80, 88......and so on. Is housing cheap? No, It's affordable......There's a HUGE difference between the two. Mike has a beautiful townhome, granted it may cost more in Northbrook.....so what! That's your choice to spend more money. Personally, I can't justify spending 100K more for my house just to be maybe 20 mi closer to the city.

No matter how you look at it, Chicago traffic F*%#&NG BLOWS......no matter where you live. Yea, I suppose I could have moved to the North Suburbs, or to the city.....however, I wanted everything to be new. Roy, I'm sure your place is nice (The pics you show can justify that), but please just remember, just because a home is more expensive, doesn't necessarily mean it's better.......For the record, I can buy 2 of your condos in the Plainfield/Oswego/Aurora area for what you're asking. Like Husker says, location, location, location.........

It all dependes on what makes YOU happy....................

[DriveATransam]

take it easy buddy plainfield might be fine for you because you guys dont work in the city/surrounding areas. I cant set post next to my office (kinda like you) because i work all over. just so happens that im working in the city right now. however, we have jobs all over. we were doing a job in northbrook when i moved here. 5 mins to get to work! the job ended about a month after i moved in though :(. we have jobs by lincolnshire, libertyville, elmhurst, northbrook, desplaines, chicago, etc. for ME, it makes sense to get a house centrally located to where we have most of our jobs- mostly cook/northern cook county.

i cant justify prices either, but you gotta do what you gotta do. it sucks, but hey, thats life. i would love to move to plainfield and have an 800 dollar mortgage, but its not worth the commute every day.

and do more expensive houses=better town? im gonna say the majority of the time it does.

more expensive houses mean more property tax coming in. more property tax means better funding for schools. means better parks. means better village matienance. not because its better because its "northrbook" or "glenview", but because there is more money.

more expensive areas also keep the so-called "riff-raff" out. you wont see cars on cinderblocks because people that have the houses are professional people making a decent wage. now take a stroll down the southside where you can get a house for 50K and what are the difference in neighborhoods? hell, just look at waukegan (sorry eric ), gurnee, and round lake. they are all very nice towns, but unfourantly the lower housing prices attract some seedy people as well. a town is only as good as its residents.

i was contemplating moving to wheeling because its between northbrook and buffalo grove. has to be a nice area, right? wrong. i was looking at houses and aside from being in little mexico, people had broken down cars on the street, cars on blocks, unkept lawns, unkept houses, etc, etc. housing is cheap. face it, cheap housing brings in slums that dont care about the presentation of their "stuff". not to mention wheeling has some of the worse schools in the state. below average across the board. is it related to housing prices? i dunno. but it was bad enough to keep me out because i could afford a better house in a nicer town.

is plainfield a bad place? not by any means. a lot of new familys are moving there because of the attractive pricing. however, plainfield is just not close enough to where we do our jobs at. for the price i paid in BG for ahouse, i coulda gotten a 5 bedroom, 3 car garage with an inground pool in plainfield probably.

no offense to anyone i might have offended in the above post :D

[Brilliant R/T]

You shouldn't have any trouble selling in Northbrook. My sister, just this week put her condo up in Skokie at 'The Barcelona' & sold it in 2 days on the market. I get to Northbrook all the time to see family as I am a northsider also. I believe that area is a hot spot. Good luck with your sell/move.

[DriveATransam]

thanks brilliant RT. i grew up around skokie area too (lincolnwood). where is the "barcelona" at? everytime i drive through skokie theres a new condo building going up. its amazing. condos are hot right now because housing prices jumped sky high.

i put my condo on the market today. showings start tomorrow. hopefully it sells quick!

[aarcuda]

Roy, Sent school ratings comparison list to your email.

IMHO - Housing prices tell the story of educational return on investment in areas we live.

Illinois School Report Cards Here

I just noticed the Gurnee mention above. Please show the low cost homes in Gurnee. I have many people who would buy them in a heartbeat.

[Doctor]

take it easy buddy plainfield might be fine for you because you guys dont work in the city/surrounding areas. I cant set post next to my office (kinda like you) because i work all over. just so happens that im working in the city right now. however, we have jobs all over. we were doing a job in northbrook when i moved here. 5 mins to get to work! the job ended about a month after i moved in though :(. we have jobs by lincolnshire, libertyville, elmhurst, northbrook, desplaines, chicago, etc. for ME, it makes sense to get a house centrally located to where we have most of our jobs- mostly cook/northern cook county.

i cant justify prices either, but you gotta do what you gotta do. it sucks, but hey, thats life. i would love to move to plainfield and have an 800 dollar mortgage, but its not worth the commute every day.

and do more expensive houses=better town? im gonna say the majority of the time it does.

more expensive houses mean more property tax coming in. more property tax means better funding for schools. means better parks. means better village matienance. not because its better because its "northrbook" or "glenview", but because there is more money.

more expensive areas also keep the so-called "riff-raff" out. you wont see cars on cinderblocks because people that have the houses are professional people making a decent wage. now take a stroll down the southside where you can get a house for 50K and what are the difference in neighborhoods? hell, just look at waukegan (sorry eric ), gurnee, and round lake. they are all very nice towns, but unfourantly the lower housing prices attract some seedy people as well. a town is only as good as its residents.

i was contemplating moving to wheeling because its between northbrook and buffalo grove. has to be a nice area, right? wrong. i was looking at houses and aside from being in little mexico, people had broken down cars on the street, cars on blocks, unkept lawns, unkept houses, etc, etc. housing is cheap. face it, cheap housing brings in slums that dont care about the presentation of their "stuff". not to mention wheeling has some of the worse schools in the state. below average across the board. is it related to housing prices? i dunno. but it was bad enough to keep me out because i could afford a better house in a nicer town.

is plainfield a bad place? not by any means. a lot of new familys are moving there because of the attractive pricing. however, plainfield is just not close enough to where we do our jobs at. for the price i paid in BG for ahouse, i coulda gotten a 5 bedroom, 3 car garage with an inground pool in plainfield probably.

no offense to anyone i might have offended in the above post :D

Come on Roy, If I had an $800 a month mortgage, do you think I'd be driving just a regular C? No, with that price myself and Monica would be in an SRT8. But, hey, that's besides the difference.

Northbrook and basically all of the Northside is nice. I have no qualms about where you live or where anyone does for that matter. You're right, going in and out of the city from where we live blows. It takes Monica 4hrs roundtrip EVERY day just to work in the city.....but you know, that's her choice. Me, I personally don't care where I live. I just need to be near some major interstates and the airports (Hey, I'm actually in Cincinnati, OH right now for that matter)

Plainfield may not be expensive right now, but give it 2 years. Right now you're lucky if you can find a decent home under 300K. Hell, according to the info below, we Chicagoans ain't got S&*T on Florida, Arizona, or California......So why even waste our own breaths????????????

Home values make unprecedented leap

By Julie Bandy • Bankrate.com

Surely you've noticed an abundance of "for sale" signs around your neighborhood lately. Home sellers are plentiful, home buyers less so. It's becoming more the norm across the nation as existing-home prices continue to cool, according to the latest quarterly survey from the National Association of Realtors.



Home prices are responding to the improvements in inventory.
"With the supply of homes picking up very nicely in many areas of the country, pressure is coming off of home prices," says David Lereah, NAR's chief economist.

Even so, home values rose at an annual rate of 10.3 percent during the first quarter of 2006, with the median value of an existing single-family home at $217,900. During the first quarter of 2005, the median value was $197,600. The median is the point at which half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less. That 10.3 percent annual growth in the first quarter is down slightly from the 13.6 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Yet, even as prices begin to level, many of the nation's metropolitan areas are still showing double-digit growth in home values. The NAR survey showed that 60 of the nation's 149 metropolitan regions experienced double-digit growth, while 12 regions decreased in value. Lereah expects that late summer when he reports the second quarter growth, most areas will be back in the normal rates of price growth -- single digits, not double.

Some of the hottest regions showed marked signs of returning to those norms. The Miami metro area, for example, grew an annual 23.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005. The annualized growth for the first quarter, 2006, fell to 11.2 percent. In the Bradenton/Sarasota, Fla., area, which grew at an annualized rate of 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, the first quarter showed a far tamer 11.2 percent annualized growth rate.

The days of over-the-top growth in housing prices may be over, but homeownership is still a stable investment. "Consumers generally can expect normal price appreciation for the foreseeable future, providing solid returns over time," says Lereah.

Leading the nation in growth once again was the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area of Arizona, where the first quarter price of $268,300 is up 38.4 percent from a year ago. Florida follows with Orlando at $260,500, up 34 percent from the first quarter of 2005, and Gainesville, Fla., with a first quarter median price of $210,100, an increase of 31.9 percent in the last year.
Regionally, the West saw the highest bump in home values where existing home prices rose 12 percent to a median price of $344,000. Homes in the Midwest rose by 6.7 percent to $158,800; home values in the South and the Northeast climbed 6.6 percent. The median price in the South was $179,700 and $285,200 in the Northeast.

The most expensive homes in the nation are in California. Residents of the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., metro area shop a housing market where the median price for an existing home is $746,800, and in San Francisco the price is $720,400.

Shopping for a bargain? Resale prices were lowest in Danville, Ill., where the median price was $52,500

NAR now reports the pricing changes on condos and cooperatives in 56 markets. Co-ops are included in the condo numbers. The national median condo price was $224,100 during the first quarter, which is 5.2 percent higher than a year ago. The national condo price is higher than the median single-family home because of the high concentration of condos in the most expensive metropolitan regions, says Lereah.

Inventory is again a factor. The number of condos on the market has picked up more strongly than single-family homes, says Thomas M. Stevens, president of the NAR and senior vice president of NRT Inc.
"Condos have good fundamentals given the demographics of buyers, with baby boomers focused on the high end and their kids on more affordable units. However, in a handful of areas where there may be an oversupply, prices may level out, so the longer your time horizon the better your investment," says Stevens.

The best growth rate for condos -- first quarter 2006 versus the same quarter 2005 -- was in the same region as the No. 1 growth for single-family homes. The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area saw condo prices jump 38 percent from 2005 to $179,600. The most expensive condos are in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif., metro with the median prices at $615,300.

[DriveATransam]

thanks for the links bob. i didnt think plainfield was as high as it is. the northbrook info doesnt really matter to me much cause im moving to buffalo grove. however, the grade schools in northbrook are ranked high!

what is also wierd is that planfield seems to be lumped together all in one district. im having a hard time putting buffalo groves schools all in one district. it seems want the highschool seperate from all the grade schools (which seemingly score higher which would bring overall disctrict scores up).

housing in gurnee looked pretty cheap when i was looking 3 years ago. maybe it has gone up like everything else :(.

[DriveATransam]

Plainfield may not be expensive right now, but give it 2 years. Right now you're lucky if you can find a decent home under 300K. Hell, according to the info below, we Chicagoans ain't got S&*T on Florida, Arizona, or California......So why even waste our own breaths????????????

great, your 320K home is worth 40K more than last year. what happens in 10 years when all of a sudden your house is worth 800K along with the rest of them around you? then you are like the rest of chicagoland and have high house prices.

4 hour roundtrip to go to the city man thats gotta suck. i like driving, i hate traffic. i shoulda bought some cheap property down there when the time was right. oh well, live and learn. coulda made a killing!

so youre away from the misses. no wonder ur grumpy

[Brilliant R/T]

thanks brilliant RT. i grew up around skokie area too (lincolnwood). where is the "barcelona" at? everytime i drive through skokie theres a new condo building going up. its amazing. condos are hot right now because housing prices jumped sky high.

i put my condo on the market today. showings start tomorrow. hopefully it sells quick!

The Barcelona Complex is at the corner of Golf & Skokie Blvd. faceing Old Orchard (Nordstroms to be exact). I actually grew up in the Rogers Park area of the city then moved to Lincolnwood in 84 til about 95. Then moved to Glenview before Az.

[DriveATransam]

i know which one that is.

my buddy moved from rogers park to LW a couple months ago. i still have my bank there actually lol. i stop by once a week for dinner at my parents and deposit my check. its insane the houses they are building there now. every time i go by they have another house torn down and building a mansion. imo the houses are too big for the lots. they are only 40-60x120. they need more space. i think barrington requires over an acre (or close to it) for building a house.

[Brilliant R/T]

I lived at Chase & Crawford.

[DriveATransam]

right on- i know where that is. i had a friend that live around there.


MLS Number: 1187616