CULTURE
Our First $1 Million Home
By Scott Jacobs
They are building our first million dollar home across the street in the lot
where Harry Kugelman’s house used to stand. Frequent readers may remember
the day Harry moved out after collecting a king’s ransom for the bungalow
he bought in 1967 for $6,500 and lived in to the ripe old age of 78.
The money didn’t last long. It bought him a year in his own condominium; followed by a stroke, triple by-pass surgery and a brief, ultimately unsuccessful, recovery in an assisted living care facility. The good news is that Harry wasn’t around two days after his death to see the bulldozers come in and knock the place down.
They’ve been building our first million dollar home for almost a year now. The plans indicate it will be one of those 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath, Euro-kitchen, media room, wet bar and deck jobs so popular in Bucktown these days. All in a 25 X 100 foot lot. And yours for only $1.25 million.
There’s not much to distinguish this million dollar home from the two or three others just built a block over. Truth be told, and I’m no architectural snob, it is uglier, the red brick exterior being kind of non-descript, and the insulating exterior walls looking to us sidewalk superintendents to be as flimsy as bubble wrap – but once you put on the drywall, who’ll know?
The Chicago Tribune reports on its website that our first million dollar home is one of 30 homes on the market for over $1 million in our 60647 zip code. They also note that, although many have been up for sale for more than a year, only six have been bought since the first of the year.
Obviously, the developer thinks there is a buyer out there for this home. But I can’t help wondering who he or she or they are. I also wonder how they are going to fit in with neighbors who include a cop, a school teacher, a Streets and Sanitation foreman and a Jewel grocery store clerk.
Just run the math. To buy a $1.25 million home, they will need a 10% down payment. That’s $125,000 right there. Then, of course, a mortgage ($1,125,000) on a 30-year note that -- at the current 6.5 percent rate -- comes to just over $100,000 a year. If the city assesses the property at the sale price, the real estate taxes will be at least another $18,000 a year, Plus insurance and -- unless they’re planning to sleep on a futon -- furnishings.
Before they even turn on the gas and electricity, they’ll be spending more on bricks and mortar than most of their neighbors make in a year. With four bedrooms under the roof, it’s a fair guess they’ll also be bringing along a child or two -- and neither will be attending our local public school -- so their cost of living in Harry’s former bungalow just shot up to $150,000 a year.
But most prospective buyers have no intention of spending that. A real estate broker who has worked in Bucktown for 20 years says the likely purchaser will probably be “a move-up buyer,” a professional couple that has ridden the rising real estate tide.
“They’re both professionals who – maybe marrying late – each sold their condos for a $100,000 profit and bought their first home,” she said. “Then they sold that for another $250,000 profit. So they’re not putting down 10%, they’re putting down 40-50% and taking out a $500,000 or $600,000 mortgage. For them, this is just another real estate investment – in a market that never stops rising.” A shrewd move, as long as the market never stops rising.
I reckon our new neighbors will be one of those two-job couples. Two lawyers at downtown law firms, or a very wealthy investment banker with an artist wife who sells her paintings to the Museum of Contemporary Art. They won’t be the first on our block. We have lawyers here, and artists, and investment specialists -- if you count the kid down the block who is heavily invested in Columbian agriculture futures.
We’re a diverse block with a little of this and a little of that, but we’ve gentrified considerably over the last 10 years, along with the rest of Bucktown. On any given holiday, flags supporting Puerto Rico, Poland, America, and The White Sox hang proudly on our front stoops. For the most part, the new residents found a way to seep into the neighborhood without disturbing the equilibrium. That is until last weekend when the Diazes threw their annual 4th of July party in the alley.
For 30 years, the Diazes have chosen the 4th of July to entertain their large and extended family with a back alley fireworks display. They bring the goods up by van from Indiana, accumulating an arsenal big enough to scare the Shiite out of Baghdad. It’s a bring-your-own lawn chair party. But the beer is free, and neighbors come from all parts of the block to participate.
This year, one of the new arrivals in the neighborhood, who hails originally from the northwest suburbs, took it upon himself to distribute an anonymous flyer announcing the Diazes planned to launch “airial bombs (sic) and other assorted commercial grade fireworks that will shake windows for at least two hours and completely disrupt the neighborhood.”
“Calling 911 will prove useless,” the flyer continued. “These illegal displays will once again prove extremely disruptive for individuals needing a good night’s sleep.” It ended with the name and phone number of the desk sergeant at the police precinct house that the author wanted neighbors to call.
For the first three days of the long July 4th weekend, the flyer cast a pall over the block. Except for the occasional Cherry Bomb – one of which appeared to go off behind the neighbor’s garage – and sporadic firecrackers, people seemed to be staying inside. But down at the local grocery store, some neighbors were fuming.
“Can you believe this guy, sending out a note like that to embarrass one of our leading families?” one complained. “Why, I’m of a mind to go to Indiana myself and take over some fireworks – just to pay homage.”
"All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the fun,” another chimed in.
Just after sunset on the 4th, I was sitting on the back porch when I saw the first “aerial bombs” go off. But this time, they came from the opposite direction of the Diazes. A second round went off in the bank parking lot at the end of the street. Finally, I looked up and a third starburst was hanging in the air just across the street. “Get the lawn chairs, honey, we’re going to the Diazes,” my wife said.
When we turned the corner into the alley, it was clear we were not the first to arrive. Fidel and Judy were sitting in their chairs, as always, chatting with the woman who sells candles across the way. Bill the cop was there, and Brian, the deputy sheriff. A cousin just back from Iraq, Chris, who is getting married in October, and his fiancé, and a couple new faces who just came for the show.
Inside the yard gates, the launch pad as it were, there were another 15 or 20 others, all young kids I’d watched grow up on the street, now young adults cautioning a new generation of teenagers about how to handle each new package. And every time another round went up, there were the usual oohs and ahs.
Eventually, of course, the cops showed up. They flashed their spotlight down the alley and Bill went down to talk to them. “They’re working, there’s nothing I can do,” he said when he got back. “But they’re going to go check on some other locations. There are fireworks going off on every block around here. If they come back, they come back.”
But they didn’t come back, and the party continued until just after 11 PM. “Okay, that’s about enough,” Fidel finally announced. “We’ve got to save some for when the Sox win the World Series.”
The bad news for anyone contemplating purchase of our first million dollar home is that, being next door to the Diazes, they are smack dab at the heart of the firing zone. The good news is they are welcome to attend. They will just have to bring their own lawn chair – if they can afford one.
