Where would you go for a new and unique gourmet meal? How about 165 feet (50 meters) off the ground with a great view? Not on a balcony or a high floor eatery surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass, but on a special table suspended by crane. Well, that’s exactly the experience offered by Dinner in the Sky . Up to 22 people can be strapped into their chairs and hoisted up into the blue yonder for a feast like no other. The special event can be held anywhere there is enough space - approximately 500 square meters. You can choose to have a full meal hosted by gourmet chefs who work at the center of the table, entertain clients for cocktails, or enjoy one-of-a-kind tastings. Just be sure to keep a firm grip on your silverware.
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Open Air Seating
“Condo Association and Board Training: 4 C’s for Effective Associations”
Wednesday, September 24 from
6pm – 9pm
Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Avenue, Evanston IL 60201
Lakeside Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit housing agency,
will present the workshop. The cost for the City-sponsored workshop
is $15 per condominium association. More than one person from a condominium
may attend, but reservations are required. Each participant will receive a 200+
page condominium reference manual, including a copy of the Evanston
Condominium Ordinance.
The workshops will cover a range of topics, including:
• The Condo Declaration, By-laws, and the Illinois Condominium Property Act;
• Board responsibilities;
• Managing the developer turn over;
• Conducting effective meetings and resolving disputes;
• Budgeting, reserves, and maintenance planning;
• Assessments;
• Self-management vs. management companies;
• Responsibilities of owner/renters living in owned units;
• Building community.
Space is limited, so call the City of Evanston Planning Division at (847) 866-2928 to reserve your
place.
Content Source: Highlights Fall 2008, City of Evanston, IL
Lifestyles of the residents of "The O.C ." have been presented often in recent years. From TV melodrama to the obsessive documentation of "real" privileged young socialites, Orange County, California - particularly Newport Beach - has become a known hotspot for fascinating theater. A different type of Orange County drama is created by this landmark Newport Beach luxury home . Its location on 300 feet of Newport waterfront sets the stage for a unique showing of elegance. The French Neoclassic estate takes full advantage of its prime positioning with stunning main channel views, impeccable grounds and dockage for several vessels. Inside, the attention to detail and the finest quality is evident throughout the 10 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, two living rooms, formal dining room and staff quarters. There is also a wine room, eight-car garage, and an elevator that whisks you between the three floors of supreme luxury. Currently listed at $38,500,000 by Willis Allen Real Estate , this extraordinary property enjoys every aspect of the desirable Southern California lifestyle while creating a level of splendor that is singular.
Original post:
Landmark Newport Beach Luxury Estate
By Jim Kinney
The total number of sales in Chicago for single family homes and condos were down 25% for the first seven months of 2008 versus the same period in 2007. As a silver lining, the average sale price has climbed 7% to $378,618 for the same period. The weaker market in 2008 is further underlined by the fact that there are currently 26,310 properties listed in the MLS as available, an almost 11 month supply based upon the absorption rate for 2007.
It is interesting to see how the various areas downtown have been affected. The traditional Gold Coast/Streeterville area was down 14% in actual sales but saw an 11% increase in average sales price.
Lincoln Park took it on the chin more than any other area with actual unit sales down by over 35% but still garnering an almost 12% increase in average sale price to $631,963.
Lakeview faired little better with a 21% decline in actual sales and a more modest average price increase of 7.6% to $430,794.
The bright spots were in the Loop and South Loop areas, reflecting the delivery of several larger projects in this period.
The Loop area registered a sizeable 30% increase in closed homes and a whopping 46.5% increase in average sale price to $581,874!
The Near South Side area saw the largest increase, 47.5% in units, with an average sales price increase of 22.8% to $487,983.
It was in August of last year that the subprime mortgage problem started to accelerate and the downturn began. It will be interesting to see if the remaining months of 2008 can begin to show improvements in the Chicago housing market. If not, we may be looking to 2009 for signs of a better market.
Housing bill to alter tax break for owners who live in homes before selling them
Kenneth R. Harney | Washington Post Writers Group
- August 10, 2008
WASHINGTON—Deep in the nearly 700 pages of the housing bill just signed into law is a complicated tax-code change that could affect substantial numbers of people who buy second homes or rental-investment real estate in the coming decade with an eye to occupying them as their main residence later.
The bill narrows the use of the code’s tax-free exclusion that allows sellers of principal residences to escape taxation on the first $500,000 of their profits (married joint-filers) or $250,000 (single-filers). Under current law, sellers can claim the full exclusion if they have used a property as their principal residence for at least two of the five years preceding a sale.
They can also claim the exclusion if they convert an investment property or vacation house into their principal residence and live there for at least two years. This has been a boon to many tax-wise owners of multiple houses.
Property owners in markets with high appreciation rates could sell their principal residences for hefty profits, pocketing the first $250,000 or $500,000 tax free, and then move into their rental condo or vacation property for a couple of years and repeat the process.
In effect, it was a form of financial alchemy where taxable profits could be transmuted into tax-free gains—up to the $250,000 and $500,000 limits.
That practice caught the eye of tax reformers on Capitol Hill. Last year the House approved a bill that would ratchet down the rules on such transactions by distinguishing between “non-qualified” periods of rental or investment use and “qualified” periods of principal residence use. It resurfaced this year in the housing bill as a “revenue offset,” a way to raise $1.4 billion over the next decade.
Here’s how it’s expected to work: If you buy a second home or investment property on or after Jan. 1, convert it into your principal residence and then sell, you’ll need to allocate any gain from the sale between periods of qualified and non-qualified usage. Rental or second-home usage before 2009 won’t count as non-qualified use in the equation.
The minimum period for qualified principal residence use will remain two years out of the five preceding the sale.
The congressional Joint Tax Committee prepared a hypothetical example: Say you are a single taxpayer and you buy a house Jan. 1 for $400,000. You rent it out for two years and take $20,000 in depreciation deductions. Then on Jan. 1, 2011, you make it your principal residence. You live there for two years. On Jan. 1, 2013, you move out and put the place up for sale. On Jan. 1, 2014, you sell the house for $700,000.
As under current law, the $20,000 of depreciation write-offs is treated as gross income. The two years of use as a principal residence qualifies you for some amount of tax-free exclusion on the $300,000 gain. But how much?
Divide your aggregate period of non-qualified use (the two rental years) by your total period of ownership (five years) and multiply that fraction (two-fifths or 40 percent) against your gain of $300,000. The resulting number—$120,000 in this case—is subject to capital gains tax. That leaves $180,000 tax free.
The current tax code would have allowed you to claim the maximum $250,000 exclusion for singles. The $70,000 difference in the tax committee’s hypothetical illustrates why the tougher rule is expected to raise millions in tax revenues. If you purchased and lived in the house for five years, you’d get the full $250,000.
Bottom line: If you plan to buy, reside in or sell a second home or rental investment property after Jan. 1, be aware of the new formula. And talk to a professional tax adviser before making any moves.
Note: In a recent column about a home-purchase tax credit created by the new housing bill, I said that if you have not owned a house in the last three years and can close before the end of next June, you might be eligible for up to a $7,500 credit against your federal taxes for 2008 or 2009, or $3,750 if you file taxes as a single person. I should have said $3,750 each if you are married and filing singly.
Contact Kenneth Harney by e-mail at realestate@tribune .com or send letters to: Kenneth R. Harney, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Homes, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Sorry, he cannot make personal replies. Answers will be supplied only through the newspaper.
Recently I wrote about the $20,000 diamond encrusted iPhone case (along with a few thoughts on the mass hysteria created by the latest gadget). Due to the crazed consumers, the new 3G is an unquestionable success for Apple, who claims over a million phones were sold in the first weekend of the product’s global launch. It is highly unlikely that there will be a million Amosu Ultimo Diamond iPhones sold in one weekend…actually, it’s almost a sure thing that this phone will never reach the million-sold mark. But for this elite luxury phone, that is precisely the point. Only a select few will be able to shell out the £89,000 (a little more than $177,000) for the luxury phone that is handcrafted by artisans and outfitted with 1,179 diamonds, including 61 comprising the familiar Apple logo. At the very least it would make a lot more sense to fill your $20,000 case with the Amosu phone, rather than the one a million people waited hours in line for a few weeks ago. Check out the video below:
Originally posted here:
Ultimo iPhone
Neighborhood offers vibrant lifestyle and comforts of home–with prices to match
By Susan Diesenhouse | Chicago Tribune reporter
- August 8, 2008
As home buyers, Nina Patel and Shari Hagedorn have strikingly different profiles.
Patel, 25 and single, relocated from Boston last fall to work as a pharmacist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Hagedorn, 62 and a longtime Chicago suburbanite, is a retired school teacher eager to enjoy city diversions with her family.
But both recently found condominiums to suit their needs in Streeterville, a Near North neighborhood delivering a bumper crop of designer high-rises that are taking it far from its historic roots as a salty shipping and industrial enclave. While the neighborhood’s northern and middle tiers have older housing, both luxury and some moderately priced, much of the new development is in its southern tier. The pricey new condos are bringing more people than ever into Streeterville, which has long drawn crowds to Navy Pier, the John Hancock tower, Michigan Avenue shopping and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Buying into the mid-section of the neighborhood bordered by Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, Oak Street and Michigan Avenue was an easy call for Patel.
“I don’t have to worry about commuting,” she said of her two-bedroom, one-bath home in a just renovated 1963 building on Pearson Street. “I’m exposed to the tourist things and can walk to restaurants in River North.”
Hagedorn and her husband Ed, 65, homeowners in Bloomingdale for 33 years, will savor weekends in their new three-bedroom, 21/2-bath unit at the Park View on Illinois Street built by MCL Cos., a major area builder. “We like the theater, restaurants, biking along the lake and taking our granddaughters to festivals at Navy Pier.”
“Streeterville’s location is phenomenal for housing, and the jobs created by Northwestern [University and its affiliates] are the economic backbone,” said Mia Wilkinson, a real estate agent at Rubloff Residential Properties. “In the south, some new retail popping up is making it more of a village, but it still needs green space.”
“Streeterville is a work in progress,” said Jeff Hagedorn, 41, who like his parents, Shari and Ed, bought a condo at the just completed Park View high-rise. His is a two-bedroom, two-bath unit. “In time, I expect a strong return.”
He has sound reason for high expectations.
The average asking price of existing and new Streeterville condos jumped to $815,884 during the first quarter of 2008 from $409,349 in late 2002, according to Rubloff Residential.
But all the growth and activity has a down side.
Some buyers, like attorney Violet Warner, 27, have been priced out of the neighborhood. This spring, she shopped for a two-bedroom condominium in the $460,000 range. New construction was too small. “They were half-million-dollar closets,” she said. “Older units needed updating I couldn’t afford.”
Meanwhile with seven high-rises under construction, including the 150-story Chicago Spire, some residents like Scott Deatherage find their once- glorious lake views gone.
“Now, I look at a brick wall and have to go online to find out the weather,” bemoaned Deatherage, 45, who bought a loft near Navy Pier in 1999. “When the market recovers, I’ll probably move.”
But he likes the Streeterville hubbub so much he may stay in the neighborhood, he said.
The construction and tourism adds dynamism, but it can also be a bother, longtime resident Karen Burnett said.
“The neighbors have worked to keep the construction and traffic under control,” she said. “But everyday, tourist buses park at my front door, unload and leave their engines running.”
Long a travel destination, the neighborhood got its name from the seafarer and huckster George Wellington Streeter.
In 1866, his ship ran aground on a sandbar where Superior Street and Chicago Avenue now intersect. In the vessel, Streeter set up house for himself, opened a bar and a brothel. As the city rebuilt from the Chicago Fire of 1871, he had debris from the cleanup dumped between his ship and the shore, eventually filling in 186 acres he called the District of Lake Michigan. He tried but failed to claim it as his private domain separate from the city. But the revelry that he and others promoted served workers in the area’s shipping and industrial businesses.
Housing stock
In the northern tier, with its wide array of older stock from classic to modernist, condos of all sizes sold for an average of $801,875 in the second quarter. In the mid-section, where high-rises built from the 1960s through 1990s proliferate, the average sale price was $661,230 and in the southern tier $661,091, according to Jameson Real Estate LLC, a broker and developer.
In south Streeterville since 2000, the pace of growth has accelerated with about 3,000 new housing units completed. Other recent additions include an AMC cinema, Lucky Strike Lanes bowling, a Dominick’s supermarket, Walgreens and Fox & Obel Market Cafe.
Average asking prices in seven towers under construction range from $1,568 a square foot at the Spire to $454 a square foot at 160 E. Illinois St., according to Appraisal Research Counselors, housing consultants.
“Until five years ago, south Streeterville was overlooked because sites were large, requiring big investments and long sell-outs,” said Gail Lissner, an Appraisal Research vice president.
The sleek glass towers going up have been designed by well-known architects such as the Spire’s Santiago Calatrava and 600 N. Fairbanks Court’s Helmut Jahn.
Although first quarter sales of 158 new and existing units fell about 20 percent from 2005, prices won’t decline, said Daniel McLean, president of MCL Cos..
“We’re here for the long term; there’s no reason to hurry,” said the developer, who has sold about two-thirds of his Park View condominiums to suburbanites seeking a second home.
sdiesenhouse@tribune.com
I recently took a trip to the "City of Lights" – Las Vegas, NV. On most occasions my trips have consisted of discovering new restaurants and nightlife, enjoying time by the pool and testing my luck at black jack. On this particular trip though, I discovered a service I’d not experienced before – Eminence Luxury Services – a high-end car rental service. When one travels, a car is often a nice amenity to have on hand, but the selection at Hertz can be unimpressive to the discerning customer. Eminence Luxury offers an easy solution in providing a large selection of most en vogue, luxury cars on the market. For the sophisticated consumer, exquisite Bentleys and Aston Martins are available. Individuals looking for something a bit more edgy and exotic can choose from a wide selection of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. There is definitely nothing boring or dull about renting a vehicle when dealing with a company like this. On my next trip, I think I might look into the Bentley Continental GT .
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The Joys of Luxury Car Rental Services
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