An Overview of Condominium Conversions

Condominiums and rental apartments share similarities in the size of units and the buildings in which they’re located, but have one key difference: ownership. Apartment dwellers pay monthly rent to the building’s landlord to live in the unit, whereas condo units are owned by the occupants. For a variety of reasons, including to cash out of the property, building owners may look into converting apartment buildings or other shared tenant properties into condos.

In addition to being an exit strategy for the owner of the property, converting existing residential or commercial buildings into condominiums can be a cost-effective and quicker approach for developers to create housing than constructing new homes or buildings. In some cases, converting buildings into condominiums provides more affordable housing. These conversions are also often initiated due to a scarcity of land and high demand for housing.

Condo conversions can benefit tenants in a variety of ways, including the opportunity to own housing, sometimes at a relatively affordable price, as the cost to insiders’ is usually lower than what similar properties on the open market sell for. Moreover, owning a condo unit can be easier to manage than home ownership, as common spaces, including pools and fitness facilities, are usually cared for by a condo owners association. Condo owners in the building, however, will likely have to pay monthly condo fees for the upkeep of these areas.

Tax savings and equity retrieval are among the benefits for landlords and owners who facilitate condo conversions. In some jurisdictions, owners could receive a property tax reduction of up to 40 percent. Moreover, the property, once officially converted, is considered single family dwelling units as opposed to a multi-residential building, which is often taxed at a higher level. The added value of condo buildings also allows owners to borrow more against the property.

There are, however, also possible disadvantages to tenants during condo conversions. The purchase price may be outside of their price range, and building management could decline depending on the experience and commitment of members of the condo owners’ association. Conversions could displace rental tenants, but many states have laws in place to protect renters. Some states even give renters a vote in whether the building owner can transform the property into condominiums. In New York, 51 percent of a building’s tenants need to vote in favor of a condo conversion.

Chicago is considered the birthplace of condo conversions, as the notion was conceived by area attorneys Joseph Moss and Harold Miller. Moss and Miller completed the first-ever condo conversion in the US in 1964, transforming a three-story, 16-unit building in the Hyde Park neighborhood into a condominium complex. The two attorneys pitched to the building’s tenants that they could own their unit while paying the same or less than their current rent each month, and also receive a tax deduction.

Following the success of their first conversion, Moss and Miller recognized there was a surplus of similar properties owned by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions. They also realized these institutional owners had trouble earning a profit on selling residential properties as rental apartment buildings. They continued to convert apartment buildings in Hyde Park during the next few years and, by the 1970s, condo conversions had become common throughout the US

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A Look at Three of Illinois’ Top Golfers

The state of Illinois has been the home of several highly accomplished professional golfers, including Bob Goalby and Bill Mehlhorn. One of the earliest greats of Illinois golf, Bill Mehlhorn was an Elgin native born in 1898. He was a pioneer of the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tour and enjoyed his strongest results during the 1920s.

Nicknamed Wild Bill after the recognizable cowboy hats he wore on the course, Mehlhorn won 19 tournaments during his career, though he did not win one of the sports major championships. That said, he was a runner up to Walter Hagen at the 1925 PGA Championship and finished third at the United States Open in both 1924 and 1926. Overall, he had 14 top 10 finishes at majors.

Other significant achievements for Mehlhorn included participating in the first ever Ryder Cup tie in 1927 and the inaugural Masters Tournaments in 1934. He won five PGA events in 1926, six in 1928, and four in 1929. He also designed a number of golf courses and, following his retirement as a competitor, coached golf at Florida International University.

Mehlhorn may have been an Illinois golf inspiration, but Belleville native Bob Goalby did one better when he won the 1968 Masters Tournament in memorable fashion. Goalby turned pro in 1958 and won 11 titles, including the 1969 Robinson Open Golf Classic in Robinson, Illinois.

Goalby began the 1968 Masters Tournament with seven tournament wins to his name, but with no tour victories in over a year. On the final day of play he faced Robert De Vicenzo, winner of that year’s British Open, for the championship. At the conclusion of play, Goalby had a total score of 11 strokes under par, which seemed to tie De Vicenzo’s score and setup an 18 hole playoff for the championship.

Unfortunately, De Vicenzo’s playing partner incorrectly recorded his birdie on the 17th hole and De Vicenzo signed off on the error and handed it in before a correction could be made. Official rules dictate that the highest written score on a card must be taken, so De Vicenzo lost a stroke, giving Goalby the win. Interestingly, Goalby had to correct a scoring error he made for his playing partner, a correction he submitted in time.

Woodson native Jerry Barber turned pro nearly two decades before Goalby. He only managed seven wins on the PGA tour, two coming on the senior tour, but he managed a memorable win at the 1961 PGA Championship, which was played in Chicago. Rain plagued the weekend and Barber found himself trailing Don January by four shots with only three holes to play, having led the field earlier in the competition.

Barber overcome the rain and humid conditions to make a series of challenging putts, including a sixty foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to force a playoff the following morning. Barber won the 18 hole playoff by a single stroke after January made an error on the last hole. At the time, he was the oldest winner of a major PGA tournament.

While she was not a professional golfer, a special acknowledgment must be made for women’s baseball legend Joanne Winter. Born in Maywood in 1924, Winter was among the original players of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She retired with more than 100 wins and a 2.06 earned run average. Following her retirement, she became a golf instructor in Illinois for three decades.

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The Rich History of Pickleball

Pickleball is the most rapidly growing sport in the United States. It is a fast-paced game that is similar to tennis and badminton but has its own unique characteristics.

People play pickleball on a level court that is 20 feet by 44 feet. At the center is a net, similar to a tennis net, that is 36 inches high. Extending 7 feet on either side of the net is a designated non-volley zone known as the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen are service areas where players station themselves.

In a game, players serve and exchange a lightweight ball back and forth using paddles made of wood or composite materials. Players earn points when the opposing team member commits a fault, such as failing to return the ball, hitting it into the net, or letting it bounce more than once.

Even though the game has exploded in popularity over the last decade, pickleball has a long history that began in 1965 on the island of Bainbridge, near Seattle, Washington. Congressman Joel Pritchard and his friend Bill Bell, a businessman, were coming back home after playing golf. They first stopped at Pritchard’s home, where they found their families bored.

Pritchard’s son Frank complained that there was nothing to do on the sleepy island of Bainbridge, and his father told him that when they were young, they used to invent games. Frank challenged his 40-year-old dad to do it. So the congressman did.

Pritchard and Bell went to the house’s back shed, picked up a plastic ball, found a pair of table tennis paddles, set up a badminton net, and played the first game of pickleball. They came up with rules for the game as they played and refined them as they went along. For example, they originally set the net at a height of 60 inches but later lowered it to 36 inches.

Later on, they called their friend Barney McCallum to help make pickleball equipment like paddles. McCallum became an instrumental figure in the development of the game. The three named the game in reference to the local pickle boat crews that raced in boat competitions for fun.

In 1967, Joel Pritchard’s neighbor Bob O’Brian constructed the first pickleball court in his backyard. In 1972, the founders started Pickle-ball Inc. to sell pickleball starter kits from McCallum’s house for $29.50.

In 1975, both the National Observer and Tennis magazine ran stories on pickleball. In 1976, the first pickleball tournament was played at the Southcenter Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington. Six years later, pickleball pioneer Sid Williams started playing the sport. He enjoyed it so much that he began organizing tournaments all over Washington.

In 1984, the sport’s pioneers formed a national governing body, the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA), and tasked it with promoting the sport across the country. Williams was its first executive director.

USAPA was successful in promoting pickleball in the United States. By the 1990s, there were pickleball players in all 50 states. However, it was after 2000 that the game really picked up. In 2003, there were 150 pickleball courts strewn across 39 locations in the United States and Canada. Five years later, there were 1,500 courts in 420 locations in North America.

In 2009, USAPA held the first national tournament in Buckeye, Arizona, drawing in about 400 athletes. A year later, USAPA formed the International Federation of Pickleball to promote the game beyond North America.

In 2014, the Pickleball Channel, the first dedicated TV station for pickleball, launched. In 2015, USAPA surpassed 10,000 members and the number of pickleball courts grew to 12,800. At the time, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) estimated that over 2 million people played pickleball. Seven years later, in 2022, SFIA named pickleball the fastest-growing sport in America, with 4.8 million players.

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Comparing American Football to Soccer and Rugby

The sport of American football, also known as gridiron football, was invented during the late 19th century by Walter Camp. The first official game of gridiron football, named for the many lines crossing the field, was contested between athletes from Princeton and Rutgers in 1869. The game spread quickly as a popular college sport, and ultimately evolved into the most watched form of entertainment in the United States.

Camp drew heavily on two much older sports while developing the rules of gridiron football – European football, known as soccer in the US, and rugby. In fact, Harvard University initially resisted joining other colleges and developed its own rugby-soccer amalgamation called “Boston Game.” By 1874, however, Harvard athletes had experimented with the more traditional style of gridiron football. The first Harvard-Yale football game was played the following year.

By comparison, the rules of modern soccer were formalized in England in 1863, though examples of similar games stretch back as far as second century BC China. Like American football, soccer began as an alternative to rugby. Today, soccer is the most popular sport on the planet, with an estimated global audience of about 3.5 billion fans.

Soccer and football share a number of similarities. These include 11-man teams and the key objective of progressing from one side of the field into the opponent’s side of the field and moving the ball into the opponent’s goal (in soccer) or the end zone (in football). The most significant difference is the fluidity of play. The game clock never stops in soccer, and transitions between offense and defense are more comparable to basketball in that they can happen multiple times in quick succession. Play in football, on the other hand, features frequent stops, and any transition between offense and defense requires a new group of players to come onto the field.

Invented in 1823, rugby is the oldest of the three sports in modern terms. That said, rugby evolved directly from an early version of European football. William Webb Ellis, credited as the creator of rugby, inadvertently invented the sport when he simply disregarded the established rules of soccer and, in his excitement to score a goal, carried the ball in his hands. Rugby and gridiron football share several similarities. For example, unlike soccer, both rugby and football are full contact sports.

Following in Ellis’ footsteps, Walter Camp both played the sport of football and occupied a key position on the board of the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA), tasked with formalizing the rules of the game. He helped the IFA make a number of decisions that have distinguished the sport and differentiated it from its European influences.

To start, Camp and the IFA did away with the scrummage, or scrum, a chaotic sequence in rugby used to determine which side has possession of the ball. Instead, Camp and the IFA developed football’s system of downs, in which teams have four attempts to progress 10 yards down the field, which starts anew if they succeed. If teams fail in this endeavor, they give up possession of the ball (with no scrum). Other major decisions made by Camp and the IFA involved the creation of the 11-man team, as opposed to rugby’s 15 players, conception of the quarterback position and the line of scrimmage, and the sport’s scoring, which is still used today.

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The State of the Current Real Estate Market: A Mixed Bag

The current state of real estate in 2023 is a complex one. The market is still recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are some signs of improvement.One of the biggest challenges facing the real estate market is the lack of inventory. There simply aren’t enough homes for sale to meet the demand of buyers. This is driving up prices and making it difficult for buyers to find affordable homes.Another challenge facing the real estate market is the rising cost of mortgage rates. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates in an effort to combat inflation, and this has made it more expensive to borrow money to buy a home.

Despite these challenges, there are some signs of improvement in the real estate market. Home sales have been on the rise for several months, and prices are starting to level off in some areas. This suggests that the market is starting to stabilize and that buyers may be able to find more affordable homes in the near future.

Overall, the current state of real estate in 2023 is a mixed bag. There are some challenges facing the market, but there are also some signs of improvement. Buyers should be prepared for a competitive market and should be ready to act quickly when they find a home they love. Here are some tips for buyers in the current real estate market:

• Get pre-approved for a mortgage before you start shopping. This will give you an idea of how much you can afford to spend and will help you avoid overspending.
• Be prepared to act quickly when you find a home you love. The current market is very competitive, and homes are selling quickly.
• Be patient. The current market is challenging, but there are still good deals to be found. If you’re patient and persistent, you’ll eventually find the right home for you.

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An Overview of Chicago’s Six Geographical Regions

Individuals and families interested in living in the Chicago area have a number of unique neighborhoods to choose from. These regions of the city are typically broken down into six basic geographical areas: Northwest, North Side, Downtown, South Side, Far South, and West.

Neighborhoods in the Northwest include Wicker Park and Bucktown. This region is a favorite of Chicagoans looking to avoid crowds of out of town visitors but still wanting to enjoy an active nightlife. Logan Square is particularly popular when it comes to well reviewed restaurants and bars, to the point that the scene has gained national attention in recent years. For those in search of a residential property in Chicago’s Northwest, neighborhoods such as Avondale, Hermosa, and Irving Park provide quiet settings that offer immediate access to the Northwest’s many shopping and dining options. Other residential neighborhoods include Portage Park and Albany Park.

North Side neighborhoods, meanwhile, represent some of the most enviable real estate in all of Chicago. It is not only one of the most popular places to live in the city, but an attractive location for professionals and individuals looking to take in Chicago history and culture. Lakeview is the most populated neighborhood in Chicago, not to mention home to iconic sport stadiums such as Wrigley Field. Despite the concentration of walk-ups and other residences, the North Side still maintains a plethora of museums and Michelin-starred restaurants. The North Side is also home to Lincoln Park, the city’s famous 1,208-acre green space.

Although Northwest and North Side Chicago feature attractive residential properties and a range of recreational activities and entertainment to choose from, none of the city’s neighborhoods can keep pace with Downtown Chicago. The Downtown area can be split into eight prominent neighborhoods, including the Near North Side, Gold Coast, West Loop, and River North. These neighborhoods have their own culture and style, from the history of the Loop to the affordable, re-emerging neighborhoods of River West and South Loop. Unsurprisingly, Downtown property prices are the highest in Chicago.

Chicago’s South Side region may have a claim as the city’s most historically relevant area. Many immigrants flocked to Chicago’s South Side during the late 19th century, contributing to the region’s international culture. Bridgeport, in fact, is the first official neighborhood in the city’s history. Any person interested in Chicago’s history of jazz or art should make it a point to visit the South Side.

Chicago’s Far South is arguably the largest region, or possibly vaguest, in the city, with more than 30 unique neighborhoods stretching from Hyde Park in the north to the tip of Hegewisch in the south. These neighborhoods account for one-third of the city’s total size. Among the area’s many landmarks are several of the city’s finest academic institutions, including the University of Chicago and Saint Xavier University.

Finally, Chicago West is perhaps the best neighborhood for individuals who want to experience a little of everything the city has to offer, at more affordable prices compared to the North Side and Downtown. The West is equal parts history, green spaces, and residential living. Major parks include the Garfield Park Conservatory and Humboldt Park. It is also home to the United Center and two of the city’s notable sports teams, the Bulls and the Blackhawks.

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Understanding Class A, Class B, and Class C Properties

Real estate investors must perform extensive research and due diligence before acquiring a property in order to determine whether it adheres to their investment model and warrants any potential risk. While it is imperative that investors conduct their own research, there are a few basic standards and rules individuals can view as guidelines for how valuable or risky an investment might be. The class rating for a property, for instance, provides investors with a general understanding of a property’s condition and desirability.

There are a few key elements of class ratings investors and other real estate professionals should be aware of. To start, the rating system has been developed by investors, lenders, and brokers, as opposed to professional organizations operating in areas of construction or property management. With this in mind, the rating system is used largely as a shorthand for the level of risk investors will be taking on if they acquire the property.

A few of the most common factors that go toward a property’s class rating include age, location, income levels of existing tenants, potential for growth, amenities, and rental income. Properties are rated either as a Class A, Class B, or Class C. Unsurprisingly, the soundest, most valuable buildings are graded as Class A Properties. It should be noted that there are no official standards for class ratings, and a Class A property in one market might rate as a Class B or lower in another market.

Most Class A properties are relatively new, generally 15 years old at most. Similarly, these properties can be expected to feature the latest amenities, which attract long-term, high income tenants. Furthermore, Class A properties occupy some of the most valuable real estate in their markets. Class A rental properties are usually supported by professional management agencies, and typically experience few serious maintenance issues.

By comparison, Class B properties are somewhat older, approaching two decades. Most tenants have reliable income, but not as high as Class A tenants. Multi-unit properties may or may not employ professional management teams and sometimes suffer from deferred maintenance issues, meaning property owners lack the funds or ability to immediately rectify problems as they arise.

While Class B properties are obviously not as valuable as Class A properties in the short-term, many investors prefer Class B investment opportunities because they are more affordable and can be renovated and improved. A Class B+ property is especially valuable to investors. This rating indicates a well run property in good condition that is just a small step down from Class A, which can still translate to significant savings for investors.

Finally, Class C properties are almost always more than 20 years old and are often in pressing need of renovations. These can represent large costs for investors who are tasked with bringing infrastructure up to code before renting or selling the property. Unlike Class B properties, this type of real estate is generally located away from attractive areas or neighborhoods. Investors may struggle to establish a steady cash flow from Class C properties because they typically attract the lowest rental rates in the market.

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