The second house, the one in Taghkanic, NY, looks like an abomination out of some dystopian futuristic movie. Everything about it feels cold and unwelcoming.
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Wow. The NY house is a statement. A good one. The Chicago house is desirable until the inside, Nina Garcia, "it's just too muCH". The LA house is just right.
OK, tell me what I am missing here. The NY house is in a town of 1000 people, 20 miles north of Poughkeepsie and 20 miles south of Albany, is off the power grid, and is actually 2 bedrooms with a study that "can be converted to a 3rd bedroom".
This can be yours for a measly $2.1 million?
I know, it's the Corian.
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Typo: Illinois is more than $250 billion in the red on pensions, according to Moody's, not $250 million.
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I love the LA house, especially the Mexican tiles in the kitchen.
I wish I could buy this house without paying the new prop tax. Way too high for my meager pension.
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The New York house looks like a train station with two levels and a coffee shop. All it is lacking is train tracks going through it.
What an abomination and an assault on the senses.
Leaving the price aside, given a choice among the three, I would pick the LA house any day. The fact that when you do come out of the house, you come out in California makes it absolutely a no contest.
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I moved to Chicagoland 16 years ago, from the San Francisco Bay Area. Of course, housing prices and comparisons thereof are a big topic of conversation between me and those still in CA.
The main thing I try to explain is that you CAN spend a lot of money, but you don't have to. There is housing at all price ranges here. (Sadly, affordable housing for the poor is as scarce here as anywhere else.) Maybe it's not the dwelling you dream of, but there's something. Imagine you have a budget of $250,00. In the Bay Area, you have no options. In Chicagoland, you'll have lots of choices!
The house in Naperville is a great example of the tear-down, overdone, too-big house on a small lot in the beautiful, charming downtown area. It looks like a mafia Don's fantasy. Many residents poke fun at this sort of house.
Most housing in Naperville isn't like this. There are a lot of brick-front Georgians that look like a kid's drawing: door in the middle, symmetrical windows, chimney off to the side. And that's if you aren't looking at older split-level homes. Plenty of condos, row houses, and apartments too!
The taxes are high, but I feel like I get my money's worth. Great city services (police, fire, utilities), train service to Chicago, an award-winning library, and AMAZING schools. Plus lots of great eating and cultural amenities, the DuPage Children's Museum, and the living history museum Naper Settlement.
I'm glad we settled in Naperville!
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Having lived in Naperville when this house was built, my husband and I would drive by and shake our heads. Leslie, you nailed it! Way out of sync with the rest of the neighborhood. Happily in Evanston now where houses look normal.
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I'd like to look closer at the Naperville house but I don't feel like getting on ReMax's mailing list to do it. Anybody else dislike it when a realtor does something like that?
My family being from that area, I clicked on the realtor's link for the Naperville home. Check out the location on the 360 street view feature on google maps. The tear downs are heartbreaking when you see the size of the homes that are being built on these modest yet pretty lots (the pre-existing homes are more charming in my opinion, too). Plus the cost!
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The Illinois house belong in LA. I would not mind the LA house, at all.
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Good point. I wonder also how the zoning regulations would allow such a tall out- of-place home to be constructed just looking at the nearby homes.
The LA home is beautiful but I would worry about water restrictions, high temps and earthquakes. California homes are generally very attractive but at the same time they are too expensive and taxes are frightening.
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That house in Taghkanic looks like it burned down and they're in the process of rebuilding it in concrete but haven't gotten to the finish stage yet.
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The interior looks like a nicely-furnished garage.
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Illinois is tied with New Jersey for the highest property taxes in the nation, and this column consistently reflects this. The last time I saw a home in Illinois featured in this space, the taxes were more than twice as high as for the homes in the two other states that were featured.
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Yeah, that GOP tax cut proposal, which includes eliminating SALT, will really benefit these folks, eh? BTW it isn't just their property taxes that are high. It's their state taxes, too.
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High property taxes in Illinois are a function of a regressive, outdated state tax system. Services are not taxed in Illinois--spark plugs are taxed, but not the mechanic's time to install them. Retirement income is exempt--if Warren Buffett retired tomorrow in Illinois, he'd pay no state income taxes. The state is infamous for exempting corporations from taxes. And the income tax is flat--everyone pays the same rate no matter how much they make.
With a tax system like this, money to run schools--and that's where most of the property tax goes in Illinois--has to come from somewhere, just as money to run prisons and parks and everything else has to come from somewhere. As for SALT, Illinois is one of six states where residents get the most out of this deduction, according to the Tax Foundation, and the deduction primarily benefits those with six-figure incomes: https://taxfoundation.org/state-and-local-tax-deduction-primer/
Illinois is a blue state, and this Rube Goldberg of a tax system was created and sustained while state government was controlled by Democrats. I'm not a Republican, but you can't blame the GOP for the train wreck that is government finances in Illinois.
Solutions are obvious--institute a graduated income tax, tax services and retirement income (after exempting the first $50,000 or so) while reducing property and sales tax rates--but there is no political will to do it. And the middle class gets squeezed the hardest.
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Interesting that low corporate taxes and flat personal income taxes haven't led to vibrant, sustained economic growth in Illinois; but, that is exactly what the GOP wants to give the country? Your property taxes blew me away. Definitely not an incentive for home ownership. We get taxed on everything in California. Even my last guilty pleasure, Cupcakes has a 2% "Health" tax:-)
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If I were to pay $2.1 million for a house in Chicago, it'd only be in Kenilworth, Winnetka or Glencoe. Definitely not Naperville. I like the LA house but you can't get much space for $2 million anymore. A pretty nice 3,500 sq ft house in Little Holmby, for instance, would set you back at least $3.5 million.
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Regarding the $2.1m house in LA: I think the real estate taxes will be more than $17,792. How much more? IMO you should take the estimated *new* selling price and apply the state real estate tax rate. In this case, $2.1m x 1.25% = $26,250.
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But still less than the one in Illinois!
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Yep - I thought that was really low too. I think it would even be $2k higher with the new bond measures passed last year. More like $28k.
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