Tag: Real_Estate

Homes Near Whole Foods Stores Appreciate Faster

Seth Anderson0 comment

Save Ten Percent with Pippin
Save Ten Percent with Pippin…

The real estate website Zillow has published a book which analyzes home values based on certain factors, such as the proximity to a Whole Foods, or Starbucks, etc. In a shocking coincidence, there are 2 Whole Foods within a mile of me (and three more slightly more than a mile away), there are 2 Trader Joe’s about a mile away, and a mind-boggling 44 ((!!) Starbucks within 1 mile of me, all per Google Maps. Perhaps there is a synergistic effect on property values, and a wealthy businessman from Shanghai will offer to purchase my place sight unseen for way, way above market value enabling me to retire to a private island in the Caribbean to work on my screenplay, or something. Do you know any wealthy industrialists with a desire to own a loft?

Your local grocery market has a lot to do with what happens in your local housing market, according to a new analysis by Zillow featured in the paperback edition of Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate (Grand Central Publishing, Jan. 26).

Specifically, Zillow found that homes grow more rapidly in value if they are closer to a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foodsi. Between 1997 and 2014, homes near the two grocery chains were consistently worth more than the median U.S. home. By the end of 2014, homes within a mile of either store were worth more than twice as much as the median home in the rest of the country.

“Like Starbucks, the stores have become an amenity in their own right – a signal to the home-buying public that the neighborhood they’re located in is desirable, perhaps up-and-coming, and definitely improving,” said Zillow Group Chief Economist Stan Humphries. “Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the stores may actually drive home prices. Even if they open in neighborhoods where home prices have lagged those in the wider city, they start to outperform the city overall once the stores arrive.”

…

“The grocery store phenomenon is about more than groceries,” said Rascoff. “It says something about the way people want to live – in the type of neighborhood favored by the generations buying homes now. Today’s homebuyers seek things in neighborhoods that weren’t even in real estate agents’ vocabularies a generation ago: walkability, community, new urbanism – and maybe we should add words like sustainable seafood and organic pears.”

Zillow analyzed the values of millions of homes near dozens of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods to conclude that grocery stores and home values are definitely related.

According to the Zillow analysisii, the median home within a mile of a future Whole Foods store appreciates more slowly than other homes in the same city before the store opens. In the months before the stores open, the trend reverses and flips, so that after the stores’ opening dates, homes near Whole Foods appreciate more quickly than other area homes.

…

The analysis clearly shows that homes near the stores appreciate more quickly than homes in the city as a whole. That means the two brands are very good at choosing locations that will appreciate faster in the future, or are actually spurring home appreciation growth – or some combination of the two.

(click here to continue reading Homes Near Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Stores Appreciate Faster – Jan 25, 2016.)

No You Cannot Use My Photo For Free Part 91

Seth Anderson0 comment

Old Town Triangle District

Old Town Triangle District

I received this email last week:

Hi- your photo of the Old Town Triangle/ Historic District sign is fantastic. I’d love to use it for a mailing…I’m a Realtor. How do you feel about that and how would you want to be credited for the image?
Thanks-Jennifer Kindel

I politely responded that I’d let her use the photo for a reduced rate of $300, asked where I should send her a purchase order, and then even asked as a post script if she had any interesting loft style properties she could show us, preferably live/work buildings.

I never heard from Ms. Kindel again. She only wanted an image to use for free in her mailer, I’m sure she frequently agrees to waive her real estate commission when she sells a place, right? I wonder if she pays anything to the USPS when she sends out her mailer? Probably not, they don’t expect compensation for their work either.

If I wanted to send a follow-up, it wouldn’t be too difficult, here’s Jennifer Kindel’s LinkedIn page, her Twitter account, her Prudential-Rubloff home page, and so on. But I guess no response is enough of a response, actually better than an indignant reply, as long as she doesn’t go ahead and use the photo without compensating me.

This has been another edition of NYCHMPFF 1

Old Town Ale House
Old Town Ale House

Good Humor Man
Good Humor Man

Footnotes:
  1. No You Cannot Have My Photo For Free [↩]

West Loop II? Ambitious plan would cover Kennedy, create office hub

eggplant0 comment

Earlier today…

Preliminary plans call for eight to 12 acres of public park that would be built over the expressway, bridging the gap between the West Loop and the central business district, said Steven Fifield, president of Chicago-based Fifield. The recreational space would then serve as a catalyst for bringing new office towers, and tenants to fill them, to the neighborhood, he said.
The capping project would cost around $45 million if it were to span the three blocks between Washington Boulevard and Adams Street, and its first phase could be funded with tax-increment financing from the city, Mr. Fifield said. As more tenants move to the area, boosting tax revenue, the project would likely end up paying for itself, he said

Via:
West Loop II? Ambitious plan would cover Kennedy, create office hub
[automated]

The Longhorn Saloon – Main Street, Scenic, South Dakota

swanksalot3 Comments

I kid you not, this *is* Main Street, in Scenic, South Dakota, right outside of the Badlands. Unfortunately, I did not have time to stop in for a beer.

[ maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=Rapid+City,+SD&dad… ]

Next time.

I think the sign says, “Indians Allowed”. Check out the large version to read the lettering (though since I enlarged a small crop, it is a little “soft”)

from 2008. Apparently it is for sale. No, not just the Longhorn Saloon, but the whole town:

For less than the price of a one bedroom apartment in much of Manhattan, you can buy a whole town in South Dakota. The catch: it’s right on the edge of the remote Badlands, 50 miles from the nearest town of any size. The population is 9.

One-time rodeo star Twila Merrill, owner of 12-acre Scenic, South Dakota is selling up due to an illness. According to Coldwell Banker agent Dave Olsen, everything in Scenic (“so-called because it’s beautiful,” he said), is included in the sale: an old-fashioned Western saloon, two shops, and a dancehall, among other buildings. They mostly date back to the town’s 1906 founding, and Olsen hopes the new owner will preserve them as relics of the Old West.

Scenic has been on the market for two months, but there wasn’t much interest beyond local business people until the Rapid City Journal filed a story on the listing on Monday. In the last 24 hours, CNN and ABC got in on the act, and a shocked Olsen told Forbes that the international press is descending on tiny Scenic.

(click here to continue reading Entire South Dakota Town For Sale For $799,000 – Clare O’Connor – Filthy Rich – Forbes.)

Chicago trader buys Esquire Theater

Seth Anderson0 comment

Esquir

Slightly old news, but I have been curious as to what will happen to the iconic theater marquee sign.

A Chicago trader has acquired the Esquire Theater on Oak Street, reviving hope that the long-vacant property will be redeveloped into a luxury shopping complex.

Donald Wilson Jr., owner of Chicago-based DRW Holdings LLC, has been quietly buying up the retail properties of financially strapped M Development LLC, the real estate firm of Chicago developer Mark Hunt, according to records filed with Cook County and the state.

Among the prominent properties now under the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trader’s control is the Esquire Theater and the adjacent lot along the high-end shopping street, stretching from 58 to 104 E. Oak St.

Efforts to redevelop the historic Gold Coast movie house have stalled since it shut down in September 2006. M Development had plans, created at the height of the real estate boom, to demolish the theater and build a boutique hotel and luxury shops. That never happened.

After failing to receive zoning permission from the city to build the 10-story hotel, M Development revised the plan in 2008 to build a three-story luxury shopping complex. That project stalled as well amid the global economic crisis and drop in luxury spending.

The building has been sitting empty in the middle of the block for almost four years, contributing to the high vacancy on the internationally recognized street that is home to designer stores including Harry Winston, Hermes, Prada and Jimmy Choo.

(click here to continue reading Chicago trader buys Esquire Theater – Chicago Tribune.)

 

Threadless moving to West Madison

Seth Anderson0 comment

Cool, I’ll pop in there more often, perhaps.

Threadless on Broadway

T-shirt firm Threadless moving to West Loop | Crain’s Chicago Business: “Internet T-shirt retailer Threadless.com plans to move its headquarters from Ravenswood to a former FedEx Corp. warehouse in the West Loop. Threadless, which lets online visitors choose the designs of the T-shirts it sells, hopes to move into the 45,000-square-foot building at 1260 W. Madison St. in July, says Charles Stephens, the company’s vice-president of operations. The 10-year-old firm, which shipped two million T-shirts last year, is quickly outgrowing its operations in Ravenswood on the North Side, where it has two warehouses that would function more efficiently if they were in the same building, Mr. Stephens says. ‘We’ve got some pretty aggressive growth targets, and in order to scale up and meet that growth, we’ve got to eliminate that bottleneck,’ he says. Threadless signed a seven-year lease for the West Loop building with a five-year extension option, says Larry Bell, chief financial officer at JRG Capital Partners LLC, the Chicago-based firm that acquired the FedEx property last year. Mr. Bell hopes the Chicago City Council this month will approve a zoning change that would allow Threadless to use the building. “

(Via T-shirt firm Threadless moving to West Loop | Crain’s Chicago Business.)

This location1 was originally just going to be a mixed use condo building, Threadless is much better from my perspective.

Via GB

Had Enough for a Long Time
This photo taken on a friend’s balcony, right next door on West Madison

Footnotes:
  1. which I went to frequently when it was an active FedEx drop-off point, closing at 9PM [↩]

Reading Around on December 14th through December 15th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected December 14th through December 15th:

  • Zillow starts charging for listings | 1000Watt Consulting – Starting tomorrow Zillow will be charging for all manual listing uploads to their site. This, as they also add rental properties to their site as well…photo by swanksalot

  • Beer Money at the MCA

  • Should We Launch a War on Immigration? – Harry Shearer – What’s striking is that none of these governments acknowledges, in these long-running, rancorous debates, that the issue is anything other than a particular, localized one, and, further, that none of these governments seems to have discovered and implemented a solution–a quota, a points system, an electric border fence–that works, that can be adapted or shared by its brethren. In this, the immigration problem resembles nothing so much as the drug problem.

    What we need, obviously, is a War on Immigration.

    Photo Credit: Flickr User swanksalot

  • immigration rally6

  • Jane Fulton Alt’s “After The Storm” – Chicagoist – Like the rest of America, Chicago photographer Jane Fulton Alt watched the events, the destruction, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on television. But unlike many people, she found herself in a position to do something. Within weeks of Katrina’s landfall, Jane found herself in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the hardest hit part of the city, block after block wiped out by flood waters as the levees gave way. Jane was part of a program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that assisted residents in returning briefly to their homes to see what they could find but who also had to immediately turn around and leave. And in this time in New Orleans – as well as several subsequent visits – Jane found herself taking photos of the destruction.

Reading Around on September 29th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading September 29th from 11:32 to 20:54: