URBALO

dedicated to giving information about buying, selling, and investing in residential real estate in Chicago.

A new TV show is being aired on Channel 25 in Chicago, which is broadcast to 400,000 households. It’s called “LorrainesChicago” and it’s an informative, energetic and stimulating half-hour show produced by Lorraine Denham, Realtor, Coldwell Banker.

“LorrainesChicago” airs every Wednesday at 11:30PM, and Thursdays at 6:30PM. Lorraine is in the Top Ten of agents, and working in the #1 Coldwell Banker office in the country, so she has alot to say about Chicago real estate.

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Two of the most coveted assignments in Chicago real estate are up for grabs. The owners of Sears Tower said Tuesday they are parting ways with the firm responsible for its leasing and management.

CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. has handled those tasks for the nation’s tallest building since 2004. The owners said the agreement with CB expires at the end of 2006, but that the firm will stay on until a replacement  is found.

The owners and CB described the parting as mutually decided and amicable. But it comes as the 110-story tower has suffered financial setbacks. Industry data show that about 21 percent of the tower is vacant, double the reported figure in early 2004.

In addition, the owners made a financially disastrous move earlier this year when they stopped Levy Restaurants Inc. from operating four locations inside the tower, 233 S. Wacker. They filed a lawsuit against their new restaurant operator, Sodexho USA, charging that they ran up $1.1 million in losses in just seven months. The restaurants are closed.

One of the Sears owners, John Huston, principal of Skokie-based American Landmark Properties Ltd., could not be reached. In a press release, Huston praised CB’s tenure.

"Together, we’ve increased Skydeck revenues, developed a robust office leasing program, reduced expenses and enhanced security," he said. CB is the largest real estate firm in Chicago.

Other owners include New York investors Joseph Chetrit and Joseph Moinian. Their 2004 acquisition valued the building at $840 million, and they are negotiating a refinancing with several funding sources.

Without discussing vacancy rates, the Sears owners said 250,000 square feet of new leases have been signed for the building in the last two years. The building contains about 3.8 million square feet.

Some leasing experts have said the owners need to cut rents more to woo tenants to a tower that acquired a stigma after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

An article pulled out of Money CNN

” Not long ago, a well-known economist surprised me by suggesting that it’s a good time for homeowners to tap their equity to buy stocks.

Crazy, I thought. If you had risked your house to invest in the stock market before the dotcom crash, you could have lost everything.

But his idea got me thinking. For many of us, our house is our biggest cash reserve, and raiding that piggy bank made financial sense for years because interest rates were low and rising home prices kept replenishing the bank.

Now, with rates up and prices soft, is there any reason to tap your home equity?

What’s changed

Opening a home-equity line of credit is no longer a slam dunk for three reasons.

It’s not cheap money Even though rates may drop in 2007, in recent years they’ve been going up, up, up. At today’s average rate of 8.7%, the interest-only monthly payment on a $100,000 HELOC is $725 vs. $387 when rates hit their lows nearly three years ago.

You could owe more than you own Lenders have made it possible to borrow 100% of your home’s value. During the housing boom, for instance, many buyers who were stretching to afford a home financed the down payment with a HELOC. Do that today and if prices fall, your home loans could add up to more than your house is worth. If you have to sell (and pay a realtor 6% or so), the difference will come from your wallet.

The market may not bail you out Throughout the boom, homeowners financed lavish upgrades with HELOCs, confident that the run-up in their home value would outstrip the cost of construction. Without that tailwind, you can’t be sure you’ll recoup everything you put into your home. You’re paying nearly 9% to make an investment that’s no sure thing.

What to do

Despite all of this, you may still want to tap your equity - it’s easy, and interest on as much as $100,000 in debt is typically tax deductible. Just be careful.

Make it the right reason That includes doing wise renovations, especially if you plan to stay put indefinitely, but not such extensive ones that you own the biggest house on the block.

Shop smart You can eliminate rate worries by locking in a fixed payment instead. Rates on old-fashioned home-equity loans are actually lower than HELOC rates today - 8.1% on average. If you prefer the flexibility of a HELOC, take advantage of all the competition among mortgage lenders and check the Web for deals in your area (Bankrate.com and HSH.com are good sources). By opening a checking account or getting the payments automatically debited from your account, for example, you can lower your rate by a half to a full percentage point.

As many other realtors, all my listings are posted on Craigslist weekly. Even though I think Craigslist is an amazing free way of getting more exposure for my listings, I find it time consuming to get a listings up on the website, and without even having a nice design applied to it.

So, after some research, I cam across a great website, www.postlets.com, that helps you create beautiful designs for your listings. Basically, it’s a few steps process where you have to fill in the blanks for your particular listing, and then at the end, you have the option to choose the theme color for your listing.

From start to the end, it took me less than 3 min to get a nice listing up and running on craigslist. The HTML code provided at the end of the tutorial can be used on other websites as well, or even when you send an email.

Check out my listing: Lakeview Listing

Beautiful right?

Macromedia Flash can be a great way to add some life to your otherwise static page. In the past, you would have to learn to code Flash by yourself, and tackle a fairly steep learning curve. This is no longer the case, thankfully - as there are many sites out there that can crank out a Flash movie or animation for you almost instantly.

Slide is one of the easiest to use applications and it allows you to quickly create an embeddable Flash graphic very quickly. Uploading and reordering images is very straightforward and then you simply pick one of a number of themes, apply it to you picture and instantly have your graphic. The HTML code is provided for you automatically so you can include it into your web site or blog.

Using Slide you could quickly throw together a multimedia presentation of your listed properties or even a tour of a particular home.

One other popular application is One True Media, which creates slick presentations, complete with music and professional quality transitions. In compare to Slide, it has a fairly steep learning curve, but the outcome is absolutely remarkable.

Here is a sample that I’ve put together by using Slide.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

The Zillow story can’t stay down. The New York Times weighing in, saying that the complaint is racially motivated.

Zillow.com, the Web site that provides free home valuations, has been accused by a coalition of community activist groups of undervaluing the homes in black and Latino neighborhoods.

And Zillow’s best defense is, “Our system is inaccurate all over,” only slightly mitigated by their other defense, “These numbers aren’t serious estimates.”

When you put it that way, that’s not much of defense.