h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's also not much crime around here. But I'm doing my best to fix the broken lock on my car anyway. As a policeman just informed me, it's illegal to leave your car unlocked here, because someone might steal it and make a bomb out of it. And with four bombs and many more bomb threats in the last two weeks, I think he might have a point...

If the area is being gentrified, PC, buying a house there now might be a good investment!

Crime rates aren't high everywhere. Our neighborhood isn't bad. I just didn't realize when I looked at that last one, how bad a neighborhood it might be- so close to downtown, I assumed it'd be OK.

K's folks are going to let us use one of their cars (they have two) till we find a new one. I think we'll visit some dealers next weekend if at all possible. I doubt we'll make it to any during the week. So his dad will pick him up at work Monday, have K drop him back home, and then K will drive back with their car. When we're ready to return it, K can drive to work then pick his dad up and have him drop him at the train station. It'll all work out.

Now we jump a bus to the grocery store before it gets hot as blazes out there again. Starting tomorrow, we should see more normal temperatures for at least a week or so.

Mala, I agree about getting in a wee bit ahead or along with gentrification. I'm going to research whether that's the case there- with the real estate market so sluggish here, it might not be coming along all that quickly. Don't want to be stuck in a wasteland for a decade or more.

We lock the car doors too, if only so the insurance rates don't go up. Since we park on the street now, if we get a new car we'll put an alarm on it.

Poor Old Putt Putt- but at least we got almost 5 years out of it after paying off the loan. It'd be worse if it had died immediately after that, and would have been just our typical luck, too.

Well, time for a quick check in...

1) we fixed the car rather than replacing- the engine and labor was just about $2,500. Since we're likely to get at least a few more years out of it, it's worth it.

2) We're going to see one this evening. I won't dig up the earlier link right now but will post it again later. We're not sure the neighborhood isn't just a little too iffy, we'll get a little better feeling about that I hope.

Taps foot. Darn time differences.

Cars can be a tough call, what is more worth it ... repairs or replace? I have sunk serious coin into an oldy and got 4 more years. Others, I cut my losses and let it go.

With regard to the car, over the last four or five years we've replaced the tires, brakes, suspension, alternator, battery, flywheel, water pump, timing belt, muffler, catalytic converter, and a half dozen emissions sensors. The body's in good shape. With the new engine, it should last a few more years with proper care and maintenance.

Now on to the house. I linked to this one a while ago but rather than dredge up the old link, here's another:

http://www.urbanrealestate.com/property/1052-N-St-Louis-Chicago-IL-60651-YBUOQFYG2J27K.html

This one is gorgeous and indeed, we could move right in without even painting. It'd barely even need cleaning.

The neighborhood might be iffy. It's predominantly black, but that's not necessarily an indicator that the neighborhood is scary. However, while those two things are not always mutually inclusive, it is sometimes the case. We'll drive through a couple more times, nighttime and weekend, to see what it looks like during different times of day, etc. The sellers are a white lady and hispanic man (they say they are selling because of the baby- the bought four years ago and the baby is less than a year old), but they are also both cops. That might have some bearing on how left alone they were.

The house does have an alarm system. The wrought iron fence in front has a dead bolt lock, and the mail box locks. The back yard has a wood privacy fence with a padlock (and a wood board pressed under a crossmember for added security). If the neighborhood is as quiet most of the time as it was last night, I'd be comfortable with that. We only saw four other people out- one older man who walked by without even looking our way, a teenage girl who glanced at us as she walked by, and two ladies, one around our age and one older, who both said hello as they went by. Overall my second impression was better than my first!

Comparing the size of this place to our current one, the closets at this house are small, about the same size as what we have, but with one more. The kitchen is smaller but with more cabinets and the same counter space. We don't use our dining room now as we have room in the kitchen, but we'd manage. We could use the second bedroom for an office and a sleeper sofa or something, and the third bedroom for bookcases/ DVDs, CDs, vinyl, etc. Presumably we could have some of those in the basement as well.

Room sizes at our current place:

living room 14X11
dining room 14X12
kitchen 14X19
bedroom 1: 12X11
bedroom 2: 11X9

we have a small foyer (as does this house) and an enclosed back porch which we use for storage. The house has a utility room which could accomodate a few of my storage bins, and a separate storage area that's not huge but the space is well set up.

The front and back yards are really nice, and there's a flower bed in the back yard I could dig up and use for a small vegetable garden. I could even fit in that lilac bush I've long wanted.

So I'm going to check the Chicago Police Dept crime blotter to see what kind of stuff goes on around there, feel out the neighborhood a bit more. Then I guess we can see what the landlord has to say about the possibility of letting us out of our lease early. IF the neighborhood is OK and the landlord is cool with letting us off the hook, this is just about right for us.

Regarding the lease on our apartment- legally, we'd be liable to the landlord for payment of rents until the end of our lease period (April 2012) or until he rents the apartment again, whichever comes first. I'd as soon he agree to neither- it'd be nice if he'd agree to forfeiture of our security deposit ($1,000) and one month's rent ($1,100) to give him time to prepare the place for a new tenant. We'd help show the apartment and pay his advertising costs as well (we're legally obligated to do that anyway, if we break the lease).

It really is a beautiful house. I love that staircase.

The one down from the first floor to the basement is nearly as nice- and has patterned ceramic tile on the landing.

so is this on some 50 houses further away, at half the price,is it in a bad place?
http://www.urbanrealestate.com/property/1052-N-St-Louis-Chicago-IL-60651-YBUOQFYG2J27K.html

I know it would need renovatings, but does 50 places in the address really make so much difference?

sorry , but I am from a small town, and I have no idea if a few small blocks would make a difference

it is just the huuge price difference within such a short area? is it the lot size? the crime area?, or just the age of the building?

Love the house and it's nice that this link has more pictures. The back garden and pergola look very friendly. Very move-in ready, just a spot of painting to be done, very nice!

Is it me being silly or is a 3 bedroom house not big enough for a couple with one child?

Admittedly, our house isn't big enough, but that's partly because the house is a fraction of the size of that one and DT works from home and I is foreign, so we have lots of visitors from the motherland.

This house is probably OK for them right now while their child is a baby, but most definitely would not be big enough once she got to be a toddler. It's not just the number of rooms, but the overall size. It'd be cozy (but hopefully not cluttered or crowded) for just K and me- before we get our hearts set on it we'd need to go through again with a measuring tape, but I think it could accomodate our furniture and some new bookcases, if we get rid of some furnishings we'd kept in storage. It definitely looks a little bigger in the photos than in person.

We're told the main reason for the move was that the babysitter is a fair drive in one direction and they work a fair drive in the opposite direction, so I gathered they're looking to move closer to the babysitter and cut the driving time by about 1/3. Not unreasonable.

If we went for this, we probably would only paint two bedrooms- the master bedroom and the pastel-painted one the baby is using. Otherwise everything appears to have been painted very recently. Bonus!

Hi Heleloo, the one the next block down, that's about $70K, doesn't show any photos so I can't really say. But the listing states that it needs rehab work, which would mean taking out an additional loan to pay the contractor for the work. I can only speculate how much the work could cost- could be only a few thousand, could be $100K, depending on how bad it is. In addition to the added cost, depending on how much work is needed, the home might not pass inspections required to obtain financing. Typically, homes with selling prices this low which need work are better for people who can pay cash.

I also notice that this is a short sale. This means that the loan is about to go into foreclosure and the seller wants to try to sell for less than what is owed on the loan. The seller's lender might not approve a sale at this price.

But this home is not even a few blocks away from the first- it's one block away which is probably around 600-1000 feet. The building is a similar style so there is probably not much age difference, and the lot size isn't that different.

This may not be true for all cities, but in Chicago, crime varies not just by neighborhood but sometimes block by block. Fair housing laws in this city require developers to include low-income housing in all areas, so it's not uncommon to have subsidized housing in a high-rent high-rise or a million dollar home across the street from a flop house. And obviously there are certain crimes- vehicular theft and strongarm robbery- which occur as often in affluent areas as low income ones, if only because the perpetrators get more value for their effort. The point of that long ramble was that it's possible that one block over would be less "nice". It's not likely that it's significantly so, but it's possible- and we did drive around the block to get there and the next street over did seem more run-down.

I looked at the crime map for the area, roughly a 1/2 mile radius. In the time period provided (August 28- September 10) there were roughly twice as many crimes reported as in our current area for the same time period, but the crimes reported are of similar nature (theft, burglary, domestic assault [not a deciding factor], vandalism). However, the building we live in now is a bit less secure, and we park the car on the street as opposed to in a garage, so I'm not sure how much I'd worry about burglary or vehicular theft.

It's stuff to think about!

I also have a separate concern- should we decide to buy one of these, I wonder how unreasonable it might be to later yikes and ask a mod to remove the links if I explained that they could be used to track me down... now I'm sort of regretting posting this journal at all. I picked up a stalker on here some years ago who got my home address and phone number and used them to harrass me for over a year before they found something better to do. I hadn't thought about the potential repercussions should we decide we wanted something I'd posted a link to.

I don't think you would have any problem getting that link removed at a later stage.

lil x

I thought not, but it's nice to be reassured. I have requested that something vaguely personal be removed in the past and it was done so without incident, but neither would I want to abuse the system.

Not that I'm positive we'll buy this one.

And I still need to share a couple of ugly ones just shits and grins.

Without reading posts much beyond the link, I do like the place. The electric forced air furnace would be cost here, but still better than baseboard electric heating. And much of the place is really fabulous. Each room has options and ideas to use for your needs. That semi-finished basement 'family room' (I'd finish it myself to better suit tastes)

I'll call you as the week-end progresses, to chat stuffs of that sort.

The link will eventually go dead when the site takes the listing down, but unfortunately the address is contained in the url. Maybe you should use tinyurl or a similar service for future ones, then you won't have to worry about that

Love the staircase, especially the blue and the oak together and the arts&craftsness!

>>>>Hi Heleloo, the one the next block down, that's about $70K, doesn't show any photos so I can't really say. But the listing states that it needs rehab work<<<<

wow! that is interesting stuff, it certainly changes things, I really don't envy you your house hunting task