Puffy cheeked angels are hurling ever-damper spitballs earthbound as Chicago gears up for its first substantial snow of the season.

Sitting in my North Shore perch, a Starbucks near my sons' school, I ease from one task to the next, observing the gathering expression of wintry nature. From the voices weighing in on the radio during the drive to school this morning GoreTex clad prognosticators are gathering on various bridges around the city to observe anticipated blockages and impediments the storm surely will bring.

Unless it doesn't.

That's the thing with prognostications, estimations, pontifications and gesticulations. The best (and worst) of intentions may bear no fruit at all. And like the weatherman so eerily portrayed by Nicholas Cage in The Weather Man, it's perfectly feasible that the meteorologist may be mundanely mediocre and miss the mark.

I guess it remains to be seen today what will happen. At least for today. And as we wait at least we wait prepared. So the boys made their way to school today where a good part of the day is spent in outdoor activity with snow boots and snow pants. And should the white stuff not gather with any force it won't be for our lack of readiness.

The same, I suppose, is true when it comes to homes floating like skiffs on today's housing market in Chicago and the North Shore where a spate of early season activity has planted seeds of optimism on the parts of sellers and their Chicago real estate professionals. So long as these listed homes enter the real estate market in a state of readiness we reasonably may expect positive results.

And so with homes that are priced truly to the market (which still favors buyers) readiness first and foremost is coming to the market at the right price. Second in importance, and vital, is how effectively, extensively and aggressively the home is marketed by the real estate professional.

In truth this is why I crack eggs on the skillet of this website. Information with specific words intertwined in the narrative is the sticky stuff that sticks to the walls of google. And google essentially is the technological fire around which we information nomads gather, rubbing together sticks of search words to flick to life flames of images, notions and things we need to see and know.

And with respect to my kindling comprised of data and heaped atop the licking flames of google there is a price reduction at my historic Wicker Park greystone at 2118 W Schiller that is now $459,000 for a three bed and two bath condo with parking.

There's also my newly listed penthouse condo in the heart of Lakeview with a private rooftop deck that will be open this Sunday from 11am until 12.30 at 3024 N Sheffield.

Another open house that has attracted tons of attention since the new year is my townhome straddling Andersonville and Lincoln Square at 1801 W Winnemac Unit C. Mitch Aronson will host the open Sunday from noon until 2pm.

Later this evening, so long as Snowmageddon doesn't occur, I will meet an interested buyer at my gorgeous Bucktown penthouse listing at 2150 N Damen where luxury finishes and a private rooftop deck with stunning views are the highlights.

Private showings also are on tap this Saturday at my magnificent Gold Coast duplex at 1224 N Dearborn. This two-level home also will be open Sunday from noon until 2pm.

And so these skiffs of homes for sale stay afloat on the waterline of the current market, steadily nosing their way to the shoreline of selling, priced right and marketed with precision and assertiveness.

By the way, good luck as you make your way through the growing white landscape. And don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions for me at 773.848.9241.

Beginner's mind.

Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki brought this notion to full flower when he said - In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

For more than 10 years I have assisted buyers and seller in the Chicago and North Shore real estate markets with their real estate transactions. The trust placed in me by my clients since I became a Realtor has placed me among the highest echelon of real estate brokers associated with the Chicago Association of Realtors.

But no matter what knowledge or expertise I have aggregated in the last 10 years for me to successfully do my job I have to approach each moment, each client and each transaction without preconceptions, judgments, biases or arrogance.

Beginner's mind.

This doesn't mean that I have to don a mask of false humility, bowing meekly to my clients like milquetoast. It simply means that by adopting an attitude of possibility and flexibility I can more appropriately respond to my clients' needs whether they are buyers or sellers. It means that I won't respond by rote or rigidly reply to the wants, desires, needs or aspirations of my clients.

This approach and mentality finds the light of day in a variety of ways. For instance this past weekend my beginner's mind married expertise with possibilities by hammering out electronic marketing pieces for my Bucktown condo and Andersonville townhome listings in which I then "footprinted" online to propel these listings higher in the google orbit for relevant search terms.

And so Sunday as I prepped for my Andersonville open house I fired up iWorks, selected a couple of pictures from iPhoto, joined them to highly compelling text, exported the piece as a PDF which I then uploaded to scribd.com (and slideshare.net) while adding appropriate search terms which nudged the beast into the very visible realm to online real estate consumers.

And so for "andersonville open house" we settled comfortably at google page two while for "andersonville townhome" we there we were several times on pages 1, 2 and 3.

The end goal of the exercise is gaining greater visibility toward market traction and finally transaction. The approach we utilize, our ongoing marketing combined with pricing that reflects the realities of the current market, urges us toward this goal. And so with the Andersonville townhome at $379,000 (under the $435,000 in price of the buyers from three years ago), its location, quality and intuitive integration to the current market, we have a tremendous commodity sparking interest among a variety of consumers seeking a single family home, condo or townhome.

And our Bucktown duplex, priced nearly $100,000 under what my clients paid when they purchased (now at $429,000), offers a two-level slice of heaven in a great location with upgraded finishes and a truly wondrous private rooftop deck. Again, it responds affirmatively to both inventory available and how the market has performed in the Bucktown area.

The point though is that the foundation beneath our activities is beginner's mind. At The Real Estate Lounge Chicago we take nothing for granted, approaching each moment in the process and the relationship with our buyers and sellers as a moment to make a positive first impression, as an opportunity to both seize the day and make our clients so-called "raving" fans.

It seems to be working. To find out first hand or if you have question about a property or want to see a listing, don't hesitate to contact me at 773.848.9241.

Friday is share day in my son Jackson's kindergarten class. Share day, for those of you not savvy as to twenty-eleven lexicon in the halls of certain North Shore learning centers, is the equivalent of show-and-tell.

So this morning was witness to me and my newly minted six-year-old son braving the bowels of our Edgewater home to nab some indescribably describable part of our shared history for Jackson to bring in front of his mostly five-year-old peers to share and explore.

The mannerisms of our kids are a glory to behold if we are patient to observe the miracle as it unfolds. Like most parents I want things to go a certain way. And like most parents with whom my wife and I associate we try to not intervene too much as our kids experiment in making choices and letting who it is that they are come to the surface and bloom.

And so it was this this morning as we entered the boys' downstairs playroom looking for today's just right share.

"What do you have in mind, JC?"

"I'm not sure," he responded. The subtext resonated with a hearty "I will know it when I see it."

Exploration has no better undercurrent than this. We will know it when we see it. Like love, the home to buy, the car to drive and the way to part your hair, we know it when we see it. And after a few minutes of rustling, shuffling through stuff and rearranging things Jackson had three distinct piles of possible shares.

Few things are as beautiful as our kids when they look over to us with a sense of accomplishment. And such was the case as JC beamed over to me that he had three piles with his share possibilities. There was a shiny blue plane from a toy store in Dallas, a sleek train from last Christmas in Paris and a bucket full of shells we plucked from the sand a few years back in Palm Beach.

His choice? The sea shells we salvaged from the sea shore. Though when later my wife asked him how the share went he recounted that these shells were from Europe.

The good news is the share went well, the day was successful and he loves his school, his teacher and his classmates. And for us the joy is simple and inexorable - it's seeing the miracle unfold each day as our baby gets more comfortable with knowing it when he sees it.

This attitude I describe with Jackson is something I see during the open houses I host each weekend as I market Chicago real estate listings. For my part I engage in show-and-tell with the public of my listings. They tend to come into the homes and condos that I am selling a little reserved, not wanting to be sold anything but resplendently grounded in the sensibility of "I will know it when I see it."

And so they will. One of the best ways to get a sense of the real estate market is by visiting open houses. But another gem that will fall in the laps of many open house visitors is they will meet the real estate professional with whom they will want to entrust one of their largest-ever investments. Bear in mind that not every real estate professional is wired the same nor do they conduct their business in the same way. But the point of this show-and-tell enterprise is to go to enough open houses and meet enough agents that you gain a sense of what you like and don't like and discern the person with whom you want to work to find your next home, the person you will trust to assist you with one of life's largest expeditures.

By the way, you will have two opportunities this weekend to see if I am the person you should choose to help you buy or sell your next home. On Saturday October 15th in Bucktown I will host from 1pm to 3pm an open house of my stunning duplex penthouse condo listing at 2150 N Damen in the 60647 zip.

And Sunday from noon til 2p in Andersonville I will host a bright and flowing townhome at 1801 W Winnemac in the 60640 zip.

I will be thrilled to see you at either or both open houses. And as always, I welcome your calls with questions, suggestions or showing requests. My direct line is 773848.9241.

It is 4pm on a rainy Thursday. Dampness combined with coolness and a general lack of sunlight imbues me with a Nordic dread of the season to come, the season after fall in Chicago.

Well, at least the windows at home are still open. While temps dipped at least a dozen degrees from yesterday the air is not so chill that the panes need defend against icy gusts. But I wonder if today is that one day in the season when the rain seeps ceaselessly down down, glistening each trees bark and chasing down the red and yellow and brown leaves and leaving the bare trees to scratch the slate grey sky like earth-bound talons.

This afternoon I noticed on the run home from picking up my sons at Baker Demonstration School from my Edgewater home through Evanston and Wilmette that yesterday's smattering of fallen leaves had become a thickening coating of streets, sidewalks and lawns. What was a tittering giggle yesterday was today a throatier and deeper suggestion of what is to come.

And so it goes.

On the Chicago home front a bit later tonight I will meet a new listing client who just a few years back purchased one of my Lakeview condo listings. Since returning to my home office after picking up my sons from kindergarten and pre-k I have compressed, analyzed and discerned the truth of market metrics relative to her Lakeview penthouse condo, gravitating toward an analysis that current market value is a good 10% under where she purchased this 2/2 with parking not quite three years back at $401,500..

This regressive numeric analysis is similar to what my clients selling their Andersonville townhome concluded when we listed last week. Having purchased in 2008 for $435,000, we came to market at $384,900 for a gracious and bright home with 3 beds, 2 baths, 3 decks, garage and 2d parking space and a location that bridges Andersonville and Lincoln Square.

Another Andersonville beauty has coasted a wicked 13% down on the list side from where my clients closed on it in 2007. This condo is a stunning top floor unit with sweeping ceiling heights, upgraded appliances and parking. Plus it is steps from the tres chic Clark Street strip.

An even more pronounced regressive market analysis is what my Bucktown clients decided when we listed their gorgeous duplex up penthouse at 2150 Damen. They purchased this gracious 2/2.1 home with a full private rooftop deck in 2006 for $525,000. We are today listed (and garnering significant attention) at $449,900.

And my client at 1224 Dearborn, a stunning two-level Gold Coast gem with a full gourmet kitchen, sits on the market a similar amount down percentage-wise from what he paid in 2005, listing at $599,900.

I suppose if there's any heavy-handed metaphor to juice out of all of this it is that as leaves fall so do prices. Another reading rooted in Ecclesiastes is that for everything there is a season and right now the pendulum for the real estate market has swung in the favor of buyers in the Chicago real estate market and just about every other domestic real estate market.

Having said all of this, though, smart pricing leads to happy selling. And properties today are selling. I will keep you posted on how these listings fare. In the meantime, when you are ready to buy or sell a place in the Chicago or North Shore markets, don't hesitate to call me at 773.848.9241.

"Clear to close."

These are the words we await when a house or condo wends its way to closing when a loan is involved. And in the current market what we know to be true is simply "it ain't over 'til it's over."

Last week on Friday morning my buying clients received a verbal "clear to close." Fortunately our very astute attorney refused to waive our mortgage contingency until what had been verbalized was in writing. Shaped by the notion that a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's not written on, the decision to maintain the contingency was fortuitous as an 11th hour credit check the lender ran revealed a previously undetected collection that had a catastrophic impact on my clients' credit report. Not just a ding this caused their score to plummet capriciously and resulted in the loss of the loan.

Rats! In 10 years I had never encountered this kind of funding implosion. Things looked about as grim as possible though my clients' skilled mortgage broker held out hope that he could pull a funding rabbit out of his hat.

And indeed he did. Working in house at Perl Mortgage he was able to get mortgage insurance and lined up a loan that will close next Wednesday. And thus from the ashes does rise Phoenix. And my clients with a two-year-old and a lease that ends at the end of the month are lined up to move into their new home in the Blaine School District in Lakeview.

As I look at the paragraphs above it seems so elementary. In truth the process was very touch-and-go with the seller's attorney and broker adopting a line in the sand mentality that threatened to cancel the deal, rebuffing the mortgage broker initially as he requested a brief extension to get his ducks in a row.

Oddly the seller was a client of the mortgage broker. He had processed several loans for her and her sister. And when she checked the status yesterday and he explained where we were she proved much more amenable to granting the needed extension than the folks working for her. I am not sure what the disconnect was, but with the brief extension she provided again we got word that the loan was "clear to close."

And fortunately this time it is in writing.

The point of all of this is that there was a fundamental matrix of professional assistance coming from the Chicago real estate professional, me, our attorney, Dina DeLaurentis, and our mortgage broker, Dan Fogel.

Working together the three of us were able to present an effective, informed and professional front that best served the needs of our client, protected their interests and brought us to what appears will be a successful purchase of a condo in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.

As always, any questions are welcome. My direct line is 773.848.9241. Or contact me via this form.

Hell or high water.

I suppose somewhere online there's a tracing of the semantic geneaology of the comment. Maybe a wikapedia article that traces it back to the guy who first uttered it. Whatever the case, to this day the combination of words is simply fine when it comes to describing that a task should take place no matter what.

Yesterday as I drove into the face of the sun heading south on Western Avenue through Lincoln Square I muttered the words to myself after an agent for a 9.30 appointment called me at 9am to say her client just called her and cancelled our appointment with 30 minutes to spare.

End of the world? Not by a long shot. But disconnected nonetheless in a buyer-oriented market and one in which showings some times are as sparse as facial hair on a teenager's chin. With the apologetic agent on the line saying that her client "had been up all night sick," I shared with her my own experience in a very different market in 2007 when my very pregnant wife and 17-month old son accommodated showings late and early to getting a multiple offer on our very gorgeous Old Town duplex penthouse.

Hell or high water.

Nothing stood in our way as we showed our Chicago home for sale en route to a very favorable transaction. And as our sparkly Lucas Storm joined us at Northwestern's Prentice on March 7th in 2007 we had the distinctive pleasure of working out the most favorable terms between two different offers. And when he was shy of his first month among other Chicagoans we were packing up and heading to our new home.

But in this capriciously different market, one I know to be favorable to the nth degree to buyers, this woman didn't feel like she could clear out for 15 minutes for her home to be shown (for an appointment slated to occur in 30 minutes). In a market when her last showing may have been more than a week ago and when the number of showings in the past month likely is fewer than the number of digits on her left hand she felt compelled to cancel our meeting a half hour before it was to take place.

Hell or high water.

All things considered this seller's action is not the end of the world or a sign of the apocalypse. It's simply baffling. And it makes no sense if the seller's goal is to sell her home. Would we have certainly bought the home? Maybe not. But there's always the chance that yes, we would have.

And the only way to know is to keep your appointments and show the home.

Maybe next time.

Smorgasbord.

I thought of the word last night when I looked at a picture my wife snapped of me and the boys (they with painted faces and me simply grinning) as we enjoyed Midsommarfest on Clark Street in Andersonville.

Over my shoulder in the lovely pic was a sign for a little shop featuring said smorgasbord.

How apropos that this word of Swedish derivation should be on this street in this section of Chicago that to this day features a number of Swedish businesses that reflect the neighborhood's historic Swedish influence.

And so you have the Swedish Museum and the Swedish Bakery side by side with nifty shops, boutiques, cool furniture stores, bars and restaurants that harmonize with the montage of peoples that make up the neighborhood as it lives today.

My first foray with smorgasbord was when I was a kid in a slightly less mellifluent neighborhood. Slightly abrasive in many respects I and my siblings gained escape from Markham because my mom donned a thinking cap to get us into the city to places like the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Old Town Art Festival, Bastille Day, etcetera.

The introduction to smorgasbord, though, was simply through my mom's deeds way back when to get us out of the house for birthdays. With seven of us (kids, that is), and a limited budget, we dashed off time and time again to where we gained the biggest bang for the buck - the Jardine's Smorgasbord in South Holland.

To my way of thinking a smorgasbord is the exclamation point to anybody with an addictive personality - all you can eat! Indeed. And while I don't see a veritable buffet of true smorgasbords in Chicago (surely nothing like Furr's down in Texas), I do see at least one clear metaphor for smorgasbord in, where else, the Chicago real estate market.

For instance Wednesday morning I and my clients found a wonderful Lincoln Square single family home. Thursday evening I joined my clients to sift through two bed and two bath South Loop listings. The next night my client and I journeyed from Chicago's New East Side to River North for one beds with in-unit laundry. Tomorrow my clients and I will take snapshots of bungalows as we make our way to their new Chicago home.

In each instance available homes lined up in a veritable all-you-can-eat manner, seeking to satisfy prospective buyers in this buyer-oriented market with very favorable pricing that marry well with great rates.

Speaking of favorable pricing, in a few minutes I will don my linens and scoot out to my Andersonville open house at 1715 Bryn Mawr. This tastefully finished penthouse 2 bed and 2 bath with parking sold in 2005 for more than $390k. Today we are listed at $349,900.

Want to sample the fare? The smorgasbord will be open from noon until 2p and available to brokers Tuesday from noon until 2.

Questions about this or any other listings in the Chicago and North Shore market? Don't hesitate to contact your man on the seen, the grinning man in the picture. My direct line is 773.848.9241.

Fresh sensibility.

It's one of the things that kids do so very well. Whether it's coloring outside of the lines or singing a song with the slightest lyrical alteration. Another gift they provide is saying words they've heard me or you say but offering them through the filter of their own hearing.

And so we have "insects."

[See this post as it dwells originally at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago]

Don't know what "insects" is? Well, it's the perfumed stick that you burn when you meditate. Or wish to fill the home with a subtle and pleasant aroma. Or, if you are like me, that you light in your truck as you drive from single family home to condo to two-flat as you connect folks buying and selling Chicago real estate.

"Insects." As I muse upon this tidbit of kid-lish I guess I tip my cards on my own verbal tendencies and intellectual synapses. "Insects" you see came up this morning as I sat in a home inspection of my buying client Steve of an Andersonville condo.

As Pete Neuman of Prairie Home Inspections went from A to Z with Steve from the common areas to the roof to the garage to the condo he inspected I typed the word inspects in my minds eye and couldn't help but see a logical progression to "insects."

The beauty of life, in one sense, is flexibility. At least this is what I tell myself each morning as I start the day doing yoga. Now I don't claim to be a yogi of any sort, let alone a guru sense of the word. But I know enough that I greet the day with more vitality when I start it with a little salutation to the sun.

And aside from the physical stretching what I believe to be true a critical part of a person's, a society's and my own well being is the capacity to move beyond rigid classifications. Call it the "goose of Seuss" or "tran-slip-eration," a little deviation from the norm is   the necessary spice that adds flavor to the personal/social broth.

And after Pete finished another edifying fact-finding mission for another satisfied buying client of The Real Estate Lounge Chicago I was glad that the only "insects" I found were those named by my sons and waiting to burn peaceably in my truck and not those ixnayed by Orkin.

Questions about the home buying or home selling process? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to call Tom McCarey (that's me) and my team (The Real Estate Lounge Chicago) any time at 773.848.9241.

I laughed at a friend's facebook post yesterday. She said something to the effect of a roll of paper towels at Costco costing her $125. I wonder how she does it when the same roll costs me $300?

As I mull over lopsided economics and prices we pay for common and typical things let me parlay her humorous perspective to my line of work, connecting local citizens with their new homes in the Chicago real estate market. What I noticed is that my clients at my most recent single family home closing spent $825,000 for a set of keys. Phew! One thing in our favor though is that the sellers liked my buying clients so much that they threw in two garage openers. There you go!

Actually, in that single home transaction in Lincoln Square the deal that my clients and I gained was ridiculously in our favor. How much so? The home's list price was $1.05m and we shaved more than $200k off in a lengthy negotiation process making the deal we hammered out more than 20% off list price. Can I get a WOW!

Truth be told, that negotiation was pretty challenging. The home was part of a corporate relocation and the corporate client held title. Having said this, the original owner was still involved in the process of hammering out an agreement. And no matter how I presented numbers, figures and statistics the seller (both corporate and individual) were stuck on what the house traded for in 2007.

Truth be told, though, 2007 has as much to do with current values as the words tea and party have to do with common sense. What was particularly daunting during the negotiation which initially culminated in an end of January closing was two-fold: the corporate owner is in Phoenix and apparently had 10 hour work weeks while the individual seller works as an actuarial with a world and numeric view that was as if set in concrete.

To give a sense of the silent scream of our talks consider that they commenced around Thanksgiving with an original culmination at the end of January. Because of unresolved items during attorney review we canceled that contract days before the slated close. A few weeks later I contacted the listing agent, a person who did an absolutely sterling job, and we started discussions again but with a price tag more favorable to us as buyers. The dichotomous seller with one part in Phoenix and one in Montreal still both dillied and dallied and necessitated another price cut singularly implemented by us the buyers.

At the end of the day the deal finally was realized on the terms that met our criteria. And this criteria was rooted simply in what we call market metrics. It was a measure of unsold inventory to available inventory, estimated market decline on the basis of current activity, and where things were trading in real time. And while the actuarials in Montreal found no pleasure in our argument, at the end of the day the plausibility of it was simply to great to refute.

And so my clients, folks with whom I have been working since 2004, were able to spend $825,000 for a beautiful set of keys along with two garage remotes.

If you want to get your own set of keys (I can't promise a garage opener), give me a call at 773.848.9241. The current market profoundly favors buyers who, with the help of an informed Realtor like those at The Real Estate Lounge Chicago, will be able to gain the most favorable buying terms.

Talk with you soon!

Staccato.

That describes yesterday and much of the last week. It was busy in spurts, with the busy-ness of the business of the Chicago real estate market erupting in spurts. Kind of like the teletype machine back in the day I wrote for the United Press International broadcast desk in Chicago when a big story hit the wires.

Chickety-chickety-chickety-chick went the clatter of the key strokes as the fall of the Berlin Wall was spelled out or as Nelson Mandela walked out of his Robben Island cell to freedom.

Not that any of my tasks in the last week were on the monumental scale of those occurrences, but helping clients to find their new  Chicago condo or single family home is fairly consequential on the most personal of levels. At the end of the day it's about coming home, a somewhat singular American metaphor and reality.

Anyway, amid the staccato-rhythmed Chicago real estate market of the past week I spoke with a fellow Realtor who is in an interesting family way. I don't mean that she is pregnant but that she has one listing whose seller is the sister and one listing whose seller is the brother. Her familial clients being slightly more functional than my own (the siblings actually speak to each other), my colleague wondered in the course of her clients' hypothetical conversations if she's about to get the simultaneous heave-ho.

Any Realtor who has ever listed a property has experienced the heave-ho. It's not something we talk about when we go to a listing appointment and we are painting a picture of our majesty as mavens of the Chicago real estate market. But any honest Realtor will tell you things did not work out with at least one client. It may have been an unlocked back door or lights left on or something equally mundane. In the current market, though, it's more about inactivity whether in actual showings or offers received.

Folks who list their homes have one characteristic in common - they all want to sell. The same is true among the Realtors they choose - they all want to sell the homes they list. Where the meat grinder revs up its terrifying yowl of pulverization is when this simple goal is not met. The home remains unsold. And like any sweetly sick pop or country song of unrequited love, there's gotta be somebody to blame whether it is in a week, a month, three months or more.

And the one with red and white circle on his forehead? The Realtor.

And so it goes, whether right or wrong, the Realtor takes the fall and someone new is called in to take care of the job. Or so they said when they spoke with the seller in their listing appointment and painted a scene of majesty related to what they would do and how they would do it.

Or so they said. What I have noticed in the current market (and by current I go back a good year and a half), one of the chief determinants related to market traction is pricing. The other determinant is the Broker with whom you list and the marketing plan they delineate and adhere to.

Price it right and you enhance your likelihood of selling. Price it wrong, not even Harry Houdini is going to make your mounting market time disappear and a prospective buyer show up with the waving of a wand.

In terms of the colleague from yesterday who represents a brother and sister selling their respective Chicago condos, only time will tell whether she hangs around or is hung out to dry. Maybe she will have the same outcome as I had on two listings where the sellers identified that they were going to head in a different direction and my last showings resulted in a contracts that closed.

You may ask, "So what did you do differently?" To which my response is, "It was the same way I marketed it the whole time. This is just how long it took."

How long it will take today is two hours as I host in less then an hour my open house of a gorgeous Gold Coast condo with a luxurious new gourmet kitchen. The address is 1224 N Dearborn and it boasts nearly 2000 square feet where typical condo square footage is typically much less. In the neighborhood? Drop by.

And if you have any questions about other listings in Chicago or the North Shore, don't hesitate to call me for consultation. With nearly ten years as one of the most trusted and respected Chicago Realtors, I assure you that you will come to regard my insights with the same degree of faith as my many other clients who turn to me and return to me.

My direct line is 773.848.9241.