I was walking Ryne this morning near one of my listings and I spotted this Cub fan flying the "W" on the 4700 block of North Sacramento in Ravenswood Manor. This is a great looking, if not typical, brick Chicago Bungalow.
From the 4400 block of North Sacramento to the 4800 block north, there have been only three single family home sales recorded in the last two years... none of these in the last year. Closing prices ranged from $490,000 for a smaller bugalow to $635,000 for larger American Four Squares.
This house pictured above is probably in the mid $500,000 range or so; depending on if the interior matches the quality of the exterior.
I rode my bike west down West Wilson Avenue over to a showing for my Albany Park listing. I can ride from the intersection of Lawrence and Damen to 3303 W Ainslie in about 10 minutes... beats driving. The Wilson Ave. Corridor, as I coined it last year, runs though one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Chicago; Ravenswood Manor. Above is a shot of the North Branch of the Chicago River river looking south.
Here's a house at Rockwell Crossing... and small little retail strip tucked into the neighborhood. It's home of the Rockwell CTA Brown Line stop, Rockwell's, Bloom Yoga, Beans and Bgaels etc...
This is rare. A new construction single family home being built at the 2800 block of West Wilson.
Passing into Albany Park, I hit the Starbucks at the corner of Wilson and Kedzie. This is steps from the Kedzie CTA Brown Line stop.
Friday night’s thunderstorms cut down a couple trees on West Argyle St., just one building over from our home. The family truckster was hit. Early Saturday morning, I pulled out of our parking space in my car and saw city trucks cutting and clearing branches from the street. I knew some cars must have gotten hit my falling branches.
It was not until after 9:00AM when my wife called and said our truck was damaged on that block. See, she had parked there late last evening. Some of the surrounding cars were totaled and ours sustained a few dents, a broken antenna and a broken mirror. Poor truck.
Last year, I was caught in Roscoe Village when the micro-burst, or whatever the hell that thing was, caused extensive damage on the North Side and North Shore a moments time. My neighborhood of Ravenswood was not affected by that storm, but many pockets on the North Side were hit hard by falling trees. These two incidents are hitting a little to close to home for me.
Now, my wife must drive our war weary SUV through the mean streets of Chicago. Battle scars.
The shame of it all is our block lost two mature trees.
Don't let this happen to you.
Our Ravenswood condo building association is small... 6 units. But we can not take managing the association lightly. I'm the President, but in reality the Treasurer and other good owners pull the strings... I'm just a figure head. Jill and I did throw a pretty good party for our turn-over meeting, which, probably clinched the presidency for me. Back to the subject...
We decided to landscape our front walk-way this season. Many factors came into play. Would we plant the walkway ourselves? What would we place there? Does anyone have a green thumb….and would that person take care of the finished product? How much would we spend? Seriously, a little decison like this can get out of hand in some associations. I've seen it.
So, we called a meeting in the winter to discuss upcoming spring improvements including the proposed landscape project. We decided that none of us had a particular expertise in landscaping required for the scope and scale of the project desired. We also decided we had a healthy budget for a two year old association and could contract out the work. We would pay half from reserves and half with a small special assessment. This was made possible by adequately funding the association with our monthly assessments. We set a budget that would allow a $3,000 a year surplus.
We hired a landscape architect (friend of a unit owner) to recommend a plan. Then, we received several recommendations for contractors to do the work. Pictured is the result.
Our Secretary on the Condo Board pretty much took responsibility of the project and we are all grateful of the much improved walk-way. But the short summary above is just one example that shows, even in a small condo building in Ravenswood, a lot of factors go into the management and care of maintaining and improving our homes and investments.
We have an “active” self managed condo association that communicates often and delegates responsibility well. I’ve seen first hand how tough it can be to sell units in problem buildings… we would rather bite the bullet and take care of our housekeeping as needed. And we have avoided the pitfalls of a small building where one individual gets stuck doing everything.
