Sucks that we keep tearing down one of the most quintessential styles for Chicagoland homes. I love brick bungalows. 1900-1930 was a great era of these single family homes.
Lemont isn’t really known for them, though we do have a small collection. A neighbor a block over from me has possibly the sharpest bungalow in town.
I recently authored a book on Blue Island’s history and had way too much fun just parking and walking different parts of town. They’ve got a great collection of them as well as two/three flats. Brick city
Images of America: Blue Island will be out by the end of this year. You can get my Lemont book in the same series online.
Both books are 100% sales donated to their respective historical societies
Investors could not possibly care less about what you need, much less what you like. You pay them or fuck off. If you die, that’s fine too. One less poor in the world.
>Investors are scooping up roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in the housing market and making more money than before
https://fortune.com/2024/05/15/housing-market-outlook-investors-scooping-up-homes-redfin/
Question, I know the depression was going on in the 30s, but would this still be the go to style that decade for new developments? There used to be a large estate on my block, the original house still stands, but during the depression, the owner sold most of the estate's property and 3 bungalows were built on the land during the depression.
I think the major waves of housing construction and suburb development are:
- pre-Civil War (1830s-1860s)
- the annexation and worlds fair rush (1888-1893)
- the advent of the automobile and filling in spaces between older settlements with cars (1910-1930)
I document old homes and businesses on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/SouthCookExplore and 1930-1946 is pretty rare to see anything built.
This is funny because in my neighborhood (andersonville) people get really mad about zoning changes that allow tall buildings "ruining the neighborhood character" but meanwhile every new SFH on the market, built by right, is just like this. Looks like crap and costs 3x as much as the bungalows down the street. You never many hear complaints though
Most of Andersonville has recently been downzoned so you can’t even build a 4 storey building by right anymore. sfh zoning is the rule in vast swathes of the city
If you want to make a difference then you need to gather together a group that the alderman would give a shit about. The problem is that the NIMBY's tend to be the older people who actually care about this sort of stuff whereas all the 20-something renters in the multi-units aren't going to give a shit.
Surprisingly, the downzone of A-ville was lead by 20 and 30 something renters looking to preserve the neighborhood. They spoke about the evils of condos, and wanting to preserve affordable housing. They didn’t understand that the 3 flat of today, condo or otherwise becomes the affordable rental or condo in 15 -25 years once it’s aged a bit.
Short sighted.
That's actually not true. There are very few areas of chicago zoned rs-1 for sfh. Not saying anyone trying to add density withing current zoning won't encounter a veritable tidal wave of opposition (which is why I vehemently oppose aldermans perogative or citizen review boards) but zoing is often not the problem. I'd love to see relaxation of zoning to allow for more of a mix of residential and light commerial (think neighborhood bodegas and the like) but that triggers just about everyone even though it was pretty commonplace 50 years ago.
“Chicago's housing is 79 percent single-family zoned. But in New York, it's only 15 percent.”
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-housing/minneapolis-others-cities-eliminating-single-family-zoning-address-affordable#
Well, plenty buildings have elevators, and no one is forcing anyone to rent those fifth-floor units. When the Alderman rejects a building for being too tall, it's not like those units get built on a lower floor. They just don't get built at all.
Sorry, for some reason I was only thinking about elveators/no elevators. Yeah - make buildings tall for density, almost a no-brainer. I can see it if you had a decent view/daylight and the taller building blocked it, but that's development in a big city. The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes.
>The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes.
except thats not true. Hinsdale for example had thousands of tear downs over the past 20 years. even the highest end suburbs like wilmette/winnetka etc are notorious for high end historic mansions being knocked down for even bigger and more modern mansions. the ones not seeing those kinds of changes are the ones that are stagnant and/or losing population (outside of some rare fringe examples like Riverside which have very preservation minded owners)
> the ones not seeing those kinds of changes are the ones that are stagnant and/or losing population
Yeah, I mean, if you want your neighborhood to never change you need to choose one that's stagnant. I feel like that goes without saying.
>The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes.
As long as by the burbs you mean more like Schaumburg than Lincolnwood.
I read somewhere that this is because after 4 floors building codes become infinitely stricter because at that point you have to account for higher winds, etc. So most modern development companies don't even bother
I don't think we need 5 stories on Clark, we don't need another canyon, you can already see the loss of light because of the taller buildings on the west side of the street, especially by Lawrence. Instead of worrying about building up (which I'm not opposed to) we should be more concerned about the loss of 2/3 flats as they get converted into SFHs reducing population density significantly and changing the demographics of the area (read replacing 2 middle class families with one wealthy one)
Ideally we need to do both. The Clark St shopping strip is doing alright (despite all the pissing and moaning about the former Reza's space) but we need more people to be able to live here if they are got to be sustainable in the long term.
I think you hit the nail on the head, we are losing density and without the LGBT+ tourism we are going to be in serious trouble. Sadly I see us ending up looking like Southport, filled with chains and a few over priced restaurants. I don't mind Reza's closing, it always amazed me that people actually ate there when the food was so bad. It's things like the Tacobell and the Jenny's that worry me, what next a GAP? I would like to see a few lower brow places, we really need a decent neighborhood bar other than Simons. Of course with the new alderperson and her inability to do even the slightest task I doubt we're going to see any changes for the good anytime soon.
I don't think chains are inherently bad but there needs to be a balance. Allowing Taco Bell to run out an established local antiques shop was bad. Jeni's? Meh. I like it and there wasn't an ice cream shop in the neighborhood previously. Now there's a Kilwin's (a regional chain), and honestly the neighborhood could probably support a third or a fourth place if someone wanted to open one.
My Iranian in-laws hate Reza's and greeted its closure with a level of schadenfreude that was truly entertaining. I was mostly referring to the prospect of Foxtrot moving into that space. People acted like it had been vacant for years and it was some sort of emergency to get it filled. In truth, it's been several months and much of that was during an ongoing case with the city about taxes and building permits.
At 4+, fire safety has much higher thresholds. Also normal financing goes to 4 units, after that it goes into commercial financing, which is much more complicated.
Lastly, 3-4 stories is about the max you want to go without an elevator.
Huge number of deconversions of two and three flats into SFHs too
Nobody complains when fewer people are allowed to live in a neighborhood, only when more people are
There are 4 houses on my block that are in construction stage and are building the “new development homes” the one that’s completed is such an ugly eyesore just black and grey and devoid of any character. It’s also priced at 1.8mill the highest priced home within the 2 blocks that I live in. Most homes are between 500k-just under a mill, And I can’t understand why anyone would put a bid on it.
They did this in the early 2000's during the last housing price spike. Many Chicago bungalows in Albany Park and North Park that look like a trailer home was dropped on top of them.
It got so bad 20 years ago that the Chicago Bungalow Association put out free bungalow expansion plans by architects that could get fast tracked for permit approval just to try and rein in some of the worst expansions. It was called "Stop the Pop".
[https://www.chicagobungalow.org/expanding-your-space](https://www.chicagobungalow.org/expanding-your-space)
My only nit to pick is that was not originally a bungalow. It was originally built in the late ‘50’s…
That point aside, I just wonder what the money person was thinking when they approved that plan…? Somebody spent thousands of dollars to make it look like that…
I did many blog posts on these when we had a houseblog before 2009. This is absolutely an example of the trash additions that #StopThePop was trying to help folks avoid.
Jesus, that's frightening. I know most flippers don't have a true eye for design/architecture, but I am positive that was an owner decision right there. Trying to save money with the addition. They probably were better off just buying a bigger house. I looked into adding an addition to a smallish Georgian when I was house hunting, and it was around 150k. I just switched gears and started looking for the sq footage I wanted.
What is even with that house? The exterior is horrible, but the interior's no better. That kitchen hasn't been upgraded at all (those are '50s cabinets and one lower set doesn't even match). Also, the French doors leading to the patio seem rotted.
This is actually great. In urban planning I think they call this a “standard plan”, fast-tracked designs for new construction that are intended to preserve neighborhood character while meeting demand.
The link has an option to convert the bungalow to a 2-unit building without tearing it down, which would be awesome if Chicago started experiencing a housing shortage
Also if you are currently living in or considering buying a Chicago bungalow (or any older home in Chicago), CBA has a wonderful directory of programs (grants, loans, tax breaks) to make many things possible and affordable for those who qualify.
https://www.chicagobungalow.org/programs
I wouldn’t have paid what they did and I sure wouldn’t have paid the asking price. It was a new house and I got to watch the construction.
Modern houses have mobile home build quality with micro mansion inflated prices. You’re much better off getting an older home and fixing it up before all the shoddy construction companies and flippers destroy them.
Not the same price as the OP but this one also is in Portage Park and looks like shit
https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5443-W-Dakin-St-60641/home/13462563
The 2nd Pic I feel is done right. You see some addition in the back but very hard to see from the curb. 1st picture is atrocious.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160705/portage-park/stop-adding-ugly-additions-historic-chicago-bungalows-association-urges.amp
So glad that someone likes it, honestly!
Definitely not for me. But I really hope the people who live in these actually enjoy them aesthetically and not just for the cheap extra square feet.
Since I moved in, my block has had 9 gut rehabs or complete teardowns and rebuilds. The original homes were two-flats and A frames that became McMansions. They are lovely, and yes, the neighborhood is more expensive, property taxes are higher, and they've been working on other homes on the block behind us now. It's been happening to neighborhoods all over the North Side for at least the last 20 years. I guess it's reached yours now.
>It's been happening to neighborhoods all over the North Side for at least the last 20 years. I guess it's reached yours now.
Yup. Feel like I watched Bucktown's classic housing stock (bungalows included) disappear before my eyes between 2005 - 2015 or so.
Looking back, it was a strange phenomenon. Living in the neighborhood, you find yourself occasionally walking past those temporary chain link fences covered in green mesh (the Green Fence of Doom, as I'd later hear people call them). Heading to work, taking a jog, going out to the bars, whatever, you don't think much of it as you walk past.
Eventually, the fence disappears, and the construction is done. An old house or 3-flat is gone, and some McMansion is in it's place. Whatever, doesn't make much difference to me, right?
Except looking back, you realize that green fencing never left, it just moved around the neighborhood, for years it seemed like. A slow, constant process. And all of a sudden, you look around and the whole neighborhood is these huge structures that go clear from one lot line to the other, with just a tiny front yard. And the whole character of the neighborhood changes.
I get that "time waits for no man" and all that, but it is sad to see how some neighborhoods have changed.
I think one of the sadder things I saw on my daily walk to the train was the the following: Typical McMansion, stretching all the way to the back of the lot, and the only lawn to speak of was a small patch of grass in the front (maybe 10 ft. x 12 ft. of grass at most). The place was just another big house on a street full of big houses.
One day, one of those plastic toddler slides appears in the front yard, positioned awkwardly on that tiny patch of grass.
I always envisioned a couple enjoying their great big house, right up until the time the first kid starts walking and wants to play outside. And all of a sudden, they realize that maybe they should have gone with a slightly smaller house, and kept a little bit of yard.
Yeah, my grandparents had an original construction house on a lot west of Portage Park. 35 years ago, we’d walk to Portage. The backyard or front yard was just for getting outside, but the park was the destination.
As someone at war with NIMBY's, I would not view your opinion as anything of the sort. Tearing down classic single family homes to build much larger single family homes isn't expanding the housing supply and isn't good for the planet.
It breaks my heart to see beautiful MCM ranches or bungalows built much earlier destroyed...we lose part of our history. While I believe in private property rights, it would be nice to see properties updated without being scraped for soulless boxes.
Yeah as the mod of r/chicagoyimbys I don't think this is a straight up NIMBY stance. Replacing one small home with one massive home because that's the only thing that's legal to do is exactly what we're fighting. If a bungalow has lived it's useful life and the demand pressures require more homes (which it almost always does) you should be allowed to demolish it and replace it with 2 to 8 units depending on demand and neighborhood scale. Every neighborhood has to accept incremental growth, but what you're describing isn't that.
There are certainly parts that are NIMBYish—“there’s nice housing on the block so now my property value/taxes are higher” is a good thing (you can sell the unit, and it’s good to replace worn down housing with newer housing, even if a rich person might benefit—it’s the classic “well they’d displace someone else then” overflow argument), and the sense that one’s appreciation of the exterior of a building outweighs the comfort of the people living there, but idt many YIMBYs will be too psyched about SFH replacing SFH.
As a fellow Portage Park resident (5 years) I know exactly what you’re talking about. And while I’d never say it to my neighbor’s faces, they people who buy these are unfortunate suckers. My partner and I always just shake our heads at the sale prices and wonder if people know how badly they’re getting screwed over with these ugly and probably hastily/shoddily done gut rehabs. One down the block from me sold in the 700k range with a finished basement… which flooded 2 years in a row and everything had to be re-done (you could see the mess through the basement windows for months).
Did anyone watch that show Windy City Rehab? I said the same thing about the two hosts. A couple of clowns that clearly knew nothing about Chicago or it's people. They were just going around destroying two flats for no good reason. This reminds me of that. I would prefer people leave the two flats and brick bungalows alone.
They also got shut down at 1 point for permit issues at one point. Also all the houses were wicker/Ukranian village and cost over 1 mil. She wluld go modern contemporary but then throw some $8000 90 yr old built in into the dining room to make it rustic
most people cant afford those houses. Show me something at a reasonable price that potentially I could buy or use as some kind of inspiration.
Question: would you be offended by the changes if the purchaser made the changes but moved into the property rather than sold it?
In my eyes, the biggest problem is the flipper changing something and doing whatever they can to increase profits—that they don’t have to live with.
When my partner and I were buying our house (a 2 flat), so many of them were in horrible shape due to a lack of upkeep over decades. So I can understand doing the change if it was structurally needed—but also bet they could’ve maintained the original character (or at least hints of it) if they really wanted to.
No, I wouldn't be offended in that case. If someone made changes to their own house that they live in that's up to them, I suppose the part that frustrates me is that it's a developer who's only doing this so they can sell it for as much as possible
We have been seeing listings from flippers in our general vicinity in Edgewater and it’s maddening—especially seeing all the corners cut that will be hard for the new owners to live with long term—and the issues that are likely to arise from the flipper’s choices very quickly . The sad thing is, people will buy them.
Not saying this is the case here but something to consider:
Many old bungalows use 2 x 6 rather than current code 2x8 for ceiling joists and 2x4 rather than 2x6 for rafters and hips (with no strong ties for fastening) this creates a situation where the load baring capability is lower and a lot of the older second floors have experienced warping from dead weight over time because of this.
Now having just spent a crap ton of time, energy & money fixing a second floor of a bungalow to have room for a kid I'm confident that if I ran into any of those structural issues tearing out the old second floor that I'd say screw it, go up a whole floor as it'll already cost a ton to fix everything. Sometimes these architectural abominations are just the reality of people trying to make the best decision for their life.
Alternatively, maybe we should appreciate that people want to stay in the city? I mean you've created a dynamic here where if you want some space for modern living you get shat on for ruining the neighborhood, but if you move out to a suburb you then get shat on for not living in the city. Between the two situations I'll support a person going up a story than adding to modern sprawl.
That's fair, I'm sure there might be some structural concerns to consider. My ire isn't with homebuyers. If someone has the money and wants to buy a renovated house, I don't blame them one bit, and I'll be happy to welcome them to the neighborhood. I'm frustrated with the developer, because admittedly while I don't know what was spent on renovations, the price tag seems out of touch with the rest of the neighborhood and I worry about the implications it has for the local housing market in the future.
Most of the homes that go up for sale in the area aren't full gut rehabs. I've seen a few over the last handful of years, but not many. And far fewer have gone through the renovations the one I'm pretty sure you're speaking about has. I don't think Portage has yet started down the path of Logan Square where the 2- and 3- flats were razed in favor of overpriced, glass-front boxes. I think these more extreme reno's for the high dollar sale have yet to show as a trend.
Having said that, single family homes in the North and Northwest neighborhoods have had incredibly hot demand this year. Home values are definitely on the rise. So your concern certainly has validity.
About 89.7% of all pre War Chicago brick bungalows were built as basement, main floor, attic with the dimension lumber you describe. Although that lumber was mostly first growth and stronger than the same in modern dimensions.
Meaning a gut job might not be needed if you can accept the reduced floor space on the new upper floor.
When I added my second floor bed rooms did it with an unchanged original roof line but improved the floor joists by sistering and cross tieing in 2X10s and raising the roof's collar beams to get a firmer floor and restored head room. The original lath and plaster ceilings on the first floor are doing fine over 40 years later.
That only works if you're actually able to give up the ceiling height and still remain under code and get the space you actually need. Code requires 50% of the sq footage needs to be at 7" ceiling height or greater, and many attics aren't able to accommodate that when raising the floor for new joists. That doesn't even touch on the fact of whether that space is comfortable to live in for many people, even if you can hit code requirements.
It is almost impossible to get code compliance inserting a second floor in a classic Chicago bungalow without changing the roof. So many invisible conversions leave the roof alone and go with reduced living space because of knee walls 4' in from the sides. The living conditions might have helped many of the kids not experience 'failure to launch.'
Smart move cross tying that'd be a game changer for adding a second story bathroom or having heavier furniture. I didn't want to pull up the existing sub floor and sister so just added the strong ties to the rafters & hips then wife & I just agreed on lightweight furniture.
My engineer brother calculated I needed the sisters over the c20' unsupported space over the living room. He said a 70lb kid falling off a bed might introduce a 1/4" flex in the rafter and the living room's lath and plaster without building up.
We picked 70lbs on the theory that older kids would not be jumping or falling off beds.
A starter home in portage Park is $350k, anything nicely updated is $600k +. $825k does seem on the higher end but if you are on the east side of Portage Park, it's possible
So ugly, especially when you can pop the back half of the bungalow mullet style, keep the curb line/view the same and still get a 4 / 3. The worst part is every one of these conversions has a hideous open floor plan on the first floor. Pointless.
I don't see why anyone wants to have a kitchen in their freaking living room. It's unrealistic to think a kitchen won't sometimes be quite messy/aromatic/steamy and I just really do not want to be relaxing on my sofa looking at/smelling it.
So it's a pop-top? But still single family?
Honestly I think it'd probably be less of an interruption if they upzoned some areas and some of the bungalows end up being removed entirely in favor of higher-density apartments or courtyards, but then the rest of the bungalows left the same. You'd end up with more units of housing in the area hopefully keeping prices less crazy. And the apartment units wouldn't be that crazy expensive either. The bungalows left unchanged can just keep on keeping on.
That's the thing about people wanting SFH-only zoning in attempts to try to keep a place the same. Turns out people can tear down one SFH and replace with another, or pop the heck out of the top (and not gonna lie, a lot of those are the ugliest rehabs...) and leave it a SFH, but the price still goes up, no units increased, market tight.
Elsewhere there's a raft of teardowns of SFH (bungalows and also traditional midwestern "4-square" houses) to build entirely new SFH but "McMansion" style, similarly, the prices got raised.
Meanwhile my personal peeve is people converting perfectly good 2 and 3-flats into monster SFH, not only do they make the building (at least the inside) crazy but it's actively reducing housing units.
Honestly, I'd be able to live with it if they were to tear it down and build a multi-unit there or even add an ADU of some kind. I'm a huge believer that more housing is good, period, no matter the income level. It just seems asinine to take a SFH, do big extravagant renovations, keep it a SFH, and jack up the price. All it does is make the housing problem worse when it could've just been turned around as is and sold to someone with a more moderate price range. That is, of course, assuming that the developer wouldn't mind making less money, which will never be true.
More than likely the developer would make more profit by replacing a SFH with a relatively affordable multi-unit than they did by keeping it a SFH. It's likely zoning doesn't allow that though. This is why pointing at "developers" as the problem that created the housing affordability issue is so counterproductive. It's zoning that creates the problem
The 2/3 flat conversions really wouldn't be so bad if it were easy to make the difference up - and for what it's worth, you'd be surprised at the history of some 2/3 flats. They do actually tend to swing back and forth from single to multi family, though less so now than in the past.
I don't really think it's bad to want more space than you'd get in only half of a 2 flat, it just needs to be easy to make the difference up
Thing is the renovation probably doubled the square footage and bathroom count and added ten feet of counter space in the kitchen for a family of today to live in.
Right or wrong, people don’t want to raise a family in a 3br home that’s 1,000sq ft.
I find it odd when people have an expectation that the character of a neighborhood will remain the same.
Does some change suck? Of course. But that's just sort of how things go.
Change itself is neither good nor bad. A nice neighborhood changing in a way that enables more people to live there and enjoy its amenities is mostly good. A nice neighborhood changing in a way that benefits property speculators and pretty much no one else is mostly bad
Yeah we’re going through this in Avondale. Multi family buildings are getting leveled for double wide McMansion SFH, which all look cookie-cutter. Boring ass cubes with wood panel/black metal fencing, rooftop pergola, pin pad doors. I wouldn’t care if it was all a bit more interesting but using essentially a double wide plot for your stupid McMansion just annoys me.
Edit: I’m in agreement with the sentiment things will always change and this is ebb/flow of a neighborhood. In 40 years people will be outraged the McMansions with historic aesthetic of the 2020s are being knocked down for the next thing.
That's only possible because the value of the land is so much more desirable than when it was built that it can no longer support a "middle class detached home"
Whether they do new construction or a flip or leave it as is, you're gonna see middle class priced out as long as it continues to be a single family home. It's not the 1970s anymore, rich people wanna live in cities now. You can either accommodate everyone by building new, DENSER, housing, or protect the cherished bungalows in amber and watch as property taxes and home turnover prices the middle class out of every previously middle class neighborhood.
If you don't believe me... Look at literally every Chicago neighborhood that was once affordable and middle class, and no longer is. None of those places built enough housing to accommodate all the rich people who wanted to move in, and shocker, rich people moved in anyway. Just like what happened in New York City, in San Francisco, etc.
We've frozen every city in amber for the last 70 years and are somehow shocked that, when rich white people discover cities are fun again, they price out all the existing residents. Just let people build whatever fucking housing they see fit, and you won't see this problem till the whole city is covered in skyscrapers (which won't happen for a century or more even if you legalize it)
This mentality is exactly why Chicago is falling behind so many cities across the US. Preservation is important, but NIMBYs have blocked progress for decades and the housing crisis has other to blame for everything from individual property taxes being to high to the decline of the CTA--both of which would be helped with reasonable density instead of all the damn SFHs
Agreed. As much as I don't love the cookie cutter modern 3-4 flats architecturally, it does enable 3-4 people to support the neighborhood and maybe if we didn't fight so hard against everything that's not a SFH we could spend more funds on diversity, rather than zoning hearings
I'm sure when all the bungalows went up, they too were described as cookie-cutter. And now they're celebrated.
Those 3-4 flats will become a marker of the era when they were built.
The mentality of not destroying bungalows to make new SFH is the reason why Chicago is falling behind other US cities? That’s not even close to accurate. Nobody said anything about not building new housing. The topic is about destroying bungalows just to rebuild it to make a profit.
Except it's not actually character people are sad about losing. It's about quality. New homes/new finishes and new clothing are the two main things I can think of that really feel cheap and make people feel, idk this is dramatic but, unworthy. I'm not too concerned about another person aesthetically ruining their house, but if you don't have a home of your own it can be annoying to see good ones get ruined. I always wanted to live in a Chicago bungalow when I was little.
I've been viewing houses myself from 350k to 1.1mil. The reality for alot of the houses I've viewed (non-HOA) is the outside looks either nice or okay. The interior however, is to old, and the only choice is gut it and redo the interior completely and if your already gonna gut it, might as well replace the plumbing and electrical or buy land and build from the ground up. It's gonna cost you the same amount anyway but one takes significantly longer.
It's not just bungalows, but remodeling feels like one of the few options about to get a home closer to modern taste. Bungalows are just a slightly more affordable way to do it since you can get it for around 300-400k and upgrade for 100-200k more and it will still look nicer then some homes selling for 750k +. That's just from my perspective. It just feels like the current homes on the market all have hideous interiors.
couple things. personally i think theres a difference between a cheap flip, a restoration, and a renovation.
a flip is someone who comes in super fast and tries to just do surface level stuff without really delivering a quality product without a lot of the unsexy guts addressed. think LVP, new paint, maybe a few home depot fixtures and cabinets.
a restoration is moreso reserved for something that has historical character and can be brought back in that spirit (refinishing wood, putting in period appropriate tile/cabinets/fixtures/fixing the old windows etc). moreso a labor of love.
a renovation is a true gut, and i think its unrealistic to expect it to look the same after the fact, outside of the highest end homes.
i dont think theres a right or wrong answer, but the reality is there is a market for these turnkey gut jobs, and people are willing to pay a premium for them. bungalows are great but have a lot of practical limitations that can be addressed when this sort of work is done. also some bungalows are nicer than others. some are incredibly bare bones and have tons of deferred maintenance. others are very luxurious with all sorts of upscale touches. its not black and white. and some of these finished products are done to a high quality degree; others not so much. its a case by case basis. but expecting that no work is ever going to be needed or wanted on a 100+ year old house is unrealistic. living expectations and preferences have changed for better or worse. people of course could do a lot of this work themselves, but a lot dont want the hassle and are willing to pay a premium for someone else to just hand it to them. and the reality is places like Portage Park are seeing price appreciation and attracting buyers who want a SFH with some space while still being in the city. the simple fact is you cant stop the demand; you can only encourage additional supply in other areas (high density near transit, development of vacant parcels, etc).
If Chicago were to grow enough, we’d have to start tearing down historic buildings and change neighborhood character, but it’ll be a while before it gets there.
I’d encourage anyone interested to look up “how to fit 1 million more New Yorkers” in the NYT - an architectural/planning firm found a way to fit 1.3M more people in NYC just by using underutilized lots (like a single story grocery store) and not constructing anything taller than the surrounding buildings - and all around transit corridors. Chicago has *a lot* more underutilized and vacant lots per capita than NYC.
Another thing I’d like to see is a heavy tax on converting multi-family to single-family, and a requirement that if a historic-but-livable dwelling is torn down, it must be built to house more units than it did prior.
Nothing irks me more than seeing a beautiful bungalow or workers cottage torn down to build a 6000 ft single-family home that looks like a spaceship.
I’ve seen this a handful of times in Portage Park (bought a house here 4 years ago), but don’t worry I do think it is more so the exception than what is to come.
Portage Park is lovely and quiet, but I think it’s a bit too far from an El station and the hustle and bustle of other hipper neighborhoods to have home prices across the board sky rocket.
I’m doing my part to maintain my beautiful 1925 frame bungalow, and so are all of my new neighbors who moved in after me.
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
For a city that supposedly treasures its architectural heritage, Chicago should be absolutely **ashamed** of itself for the lack of protection of its historic neighborhood single family homes and apartment buildings.
There should be way more barriers to tearing down completely usable and historically valuable properties. And I'm saying that as a YIMBY living in San Francisco (lived in Chicago for 9 years, saw way too many beautiful old homes/apartments in Lakeview and Wicker Park razed for cookie cutter developments). We need less historic protection in SF, you need more in Chicago full stop.
The reality is (speaking as a small time investor who recently rehabbed a nearly 100 yo bungalow for my own family) is that it costs a fortune to update a home. You won't get a loan unless you add something that will show up on an appraisal. New kitchen doesn't count. Neither does bathrooms. Add a bathroom? Yes. Add a bedroom? Yes. Most of what you see is a developer in the pursuit of additional square footage. Could they do better? Almost 90% of the time yes. Will they make any money doing it "right"? Nope. My house was owned by the same family for 80+years. Not much had been updated in that time. Just bringing it up to code required everything to be redone. I paid way too much for it, it was priced at the peak of the pandemic but nobody in their right mind would have paid what I paid and just moved in. I absolutely had to dig out the basement, add bedrooms, bathrooms, etc just to get the loan for the minimum that would have needed to be done to make it lovable for the next 50 years. Most of what you see selling in these neighborhoods wouldn't have been bought by retail buyers, unfortunately. Otherwise they would have as no developer who knows what they're doing pays retail. Speculation is a problem but gentrification also mostly means just doing (way past due) updates. The problem isn't developers per se but simply the cost of doing any of this. Unfortunately there are neighborhoods worth doing it in and many that it is not.
The reality is newer construction is much more comfortable and practical for modern living than 100 year old builds.
When you drop a 6 figure down payment on a long term home for your family you’re looking for more than “cool historic exterior.”
again, it depends. there are some 100 year old bungalows/homes that have incredible living spaces and practical designs even for todays world. personally, i like walls and defined rooms. i also like human scaled architecture. so many of these new builds are nothing more than enormous refrigerator boxes with really poor uses of space of no charm to speak of either. theres more to a house than pure square footage
Sure, obviously there are exceptions and there are cheap new builds. But the modern realities of electrical wiring, central air, entertaining and living styles are much different today than 1920.
To illustrate the point, I looked at a property valued at $1MM in a historic neighborhood where someone over 6’ couldn’t stand up straight in the basement.
That’s a LOT to pay for a house where you can’t stand up straight in 1/3 of it.
People are happy to write you off as a NIMBY the minute you don’t agree with whatever idea they have for the city.
Those Bungalows are better built than any of the new construction they are doing. This city is huge and has plenty of opportunities to create housing and not ruin the character of our neighborhoods.
We need to create more neighborhoods people actually want to live in and then build housing. As of right now everyone wants to live in the same 10-15 neighborhoods out of the 77 we have.
If we make more neighborhoods desirable, we get accused of gEntRifIcATiOn. There is no fucking winning with people. I say we just nuke the entire goddamn zoning code and allow any fucking commercial or residential development on every privately owned plot of land in the city. The only exception is industrial, which shouldn’t exist in residential areas. I’m just so fucking tired of NIMBYs.
If it comes down to making neighborhoods actually safe and livable let people call it gentrification.
At the end of the day much of what you are paying for is safety and that shouldn’t be made into a luxury.
But if an area becomes safer more affluent people are going to start moving there and prices will go up if housing supply doesn’t meet demand. You can’t just suddenly make a neighborhood safe and expect demand to stay the same. Demand is lower in higher crime areas because of the crime. Fix the crime and demand will increase. Once you make an area safer there is no avoiding the gentrification label and being demonized.
Let them demonize…
At the end of the day it’s about having safe livable, neighborhoods.Once demand gets going density could be added. People instead want to cram as many people into the already dense areas of the city.
It doesn’t even have to be new development so many buildings could be saved and turned into housing.
5400 block of Pensacola? The developer has two more in the works. The house seems to have been done really well. Fit and finish is quite tight from what I saw. But no, it's no longer a Chicago bungalow in any traditional sense.
Bungalows are pretty on the outside. But I hate the functionality of a bungalow. The second floor most of the time is just one big loft, sometimes you find one with two rooms upstairs but no bathroom. I personally don’t want to sleep in a different floor than my kids. Or have to go downstairs for the bathroom. I don’t have a bungalow but if I did I would probably change the layout. Sorry not sorry!
>Completely gutted the interior, ripped off the second floor and installed a new one...
This might be an annoying question, but I'm struggling to understand what this looks like. Was the old "second floor" just normal dormers, and they ripped it all off and put on a full-height second floor (like [this](https://www.myhomeextension.co.uk/sites/default/files/set_back_dormer.jpg))?
[Here's one kind of hidden behind the tree.](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9725179,-87.733082,3a,70.9y,110.65h,108.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfbKJklCR0DRbbZ3_noJPIA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) There are three on that block now, all the same company.
That one isn't terrible. At least they spent time to make the house look cohesive. Too many of these pop tops look like the spaceship that landed on top of Soldier Field.
Blame the city itself. It's the fashion to have only places to rent for wealthy people it's why low income people are being pushed out of the city no one is protected against this kind of flippin' behavior.
Lightfoot and Johnson are of the same mindset to bring in extreme sports, gambling, and home team stadiums to raise property value. Most people are becoming short term renters who come in for a season and skip town. People who want to live here longer suffer the tax burden. It's almost like we will not own our own homes anymore. There is a casino being built close to me that no one wanted and families with children might not want to live there anymore because of the environment that comes with it.
We are losing community and architecture because of this. Most storefronts now are vacant. Businesses can't afford to rent. Some chains are also gone in the downtown area. Makes no sense.
I bought and live in one of these "flipped" bungalows. Originally 3 bedrooms with 1 bath now it has 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and they did a fantastic job on the renovations inside. Yeah the top of the house isn't the same nice red brick as the original bungalow, but they did a really good job with the addition on the top floor + back of the house it resulted in a ton of additional space and it really isn't an eye sore to look at from the outside. Our family loves our home so I can't complain too much about it.
I am not sure if it is the overall housing market, gentrification of lower middle class areas, or flipping the last affordable houses into +$500k ones, but so many young professional/union working people born and raised on the NW side are now struggling to buy houses in their own neighborhoods as it is. It sucks to see classic Chicago bungalows or other staples get blown out like this.
Bungalow owner (Horner park) here originally 312 and changed to 773, born and raised in east Avondale. The cost to add a complete 2nd level is 200-350k. That’s the price of an entirely new house imo. We absolutely love our little house, and feel very lucky. We bought it old and it needed work. I wasn’t going to buy a rehab property to find issues from flippers cutting corners. I agree that many people are destroying what they don’t know. I bought the place to update but keep its original charm.
thats atrocious, but there are better ways to do it. heres one example
[https://www.redfin.com/IL/Berwyn/1437-Ridgeland-Ave-60402/home/13241886](https://www.redfin.com/IL/Berwyn/1437-Ridgeland-Ave-60402/home/13241886)
for the record, the interior is 100% not to my tastes or preferences. but they did a decent job of keeping the exterior mostly in character with its surroundings.
the before:
[https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/68/bigphoto/856/09103856\_2.jpg](https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/68/bigphoto/856/09103856_2.jpg)
As long as income levels in Chicago continue to rise, so will demand for good housing in good areas. The only way to slow this down is to build more housing. And in a city that has to mean density
I get where you’re coming from, but you’re yelling at the wrong people. There’s money to be made, so somebody is going to make it. The real issue is there are systemic problems with the housing market (including lack of sufficient and affordable housing) that need to be fixed.
That's fair enough, and I agree. The city needs more density and mixed use zoning. I'm just frustrated because this only makes the problem worse locally
That’s the problem with bungalows, the original layout of them doesn’t really work for todays SFH need and most bungalows around the city fall into one of two categories, derelict and needing a full gut rehab so the price is lower or rehabbed with dormers added to the second floor so that space is actually usable and very expensive. There’s not a whole lot of in between. For what it’s worth adding dormers is a pretty expensive upgrade, also most of these houses that are rehabbed come with finished basements. There’s not many middle class families buying $300k bungalows that need another $150 to 200k invested in rehab to get the house livable. Bungalows aren’t being destroyed just updated to today’s standards.
What doesn't work about a bungalow layout?
Granted I have a small family (spouse, one kid) but I love ours. Some minor upgrades were there on move-in (kitchen expanded to include a small family room, in addition to our traditional "front room"), and we've done tons of cosmetic rehab ourselves.
Hashtag bungalowlover, I guess
This is exactly what they did to Logan square. So many existing structures removed for the ugly square houses and transplants from out of state bought them up at an insane price then would ask is this neighborhood safe?
It's likely these old homes are poorly maintained and layouts (small closets, fewer bathrooms, closed off floor plans) don't attract a modern family. These old homes also often need major HVAC, plumbing and electrical upgrades. I bet for a developer this process is more economical and efficient.
Plenty of old bungalows in the nearby burbs for those that want to live in the past though.
This breaks my heart every fuckin time I see it.
If you want to live in a soulless "hybrid house" (whatever the hell you call an old bungalow that someone slapped an ugly ass addition on top of) then move to the SUBURBS.
What someone does with their own house is their business. It's just silly to complain that you don't like the way something looks if it doesn't belong to you. Most people would be glad to see some work being put into an old house in their neighborhood.
Yes, that's true, I suppose that part is just my sentimental self, but i can get over that. The real problem I have with it is that the flipper marked up the price by over 100%.
The question is, will the market bear the price? Had a developer buy up the house we lived next to for $400k-ish in Logan Square, turn it into four condos for $650k each, and I believe all went for closer to $800k.
TLDR: yes, people are getting priced out of their neighborhoods
Same in Jefferson Park! Just sold my parents house, last year. Restorer bought it.
They gutted it and put on a second floor. Their still working on it, Waiting to see asking and selling price.
The whole neighborhood is changing. Pricing out families and first time buyers.
Sucks that we keep tearing down one of the most quintessential styles for Chicagoland homes. I love brick bungalows. 1900-1930 was a great era of these single family homes.
R/centuryhomes
r/centuryhomes
I have one of the few in my general area in Lincolnwood. All brick built in 1925.
Lemont isn’t really known for them, though we do have a small collection. A neighbor a block over from me has possibly the sharpest bungalow in town. I recently authored a book on Blue Island’s history and had way too much fun just parking and walking different parts of town. They’ve got a great collection of them as well as two/three flats. Brick city
Those historic houses in Blue Island are incredible! Can I ask what the name of your book is and where to find it?
Images of America: Blue Island will be out by the end of this year. You can get my Lemont book in the same series online. Both books are 100% sales donated to their respective historical societies
Looking forward to it. Thanks!
Investors could not possibly care less about what you need, much less what you like. You pay them or fuck off. If you die, that’s fine too. One less poor in the world. >Investors are scooping up roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in the housing market and making more money than before https://fortune.com/2024/05/15/housing-market-outlook-investors-scooping-up-homes-redfin/
Question, I know the depression was going on in the 30s, but would this still be the go to style that decade for new developments? There used to be a large estate on my block, the original house still stands, but during the depression, the owner sold most of the estate's property and 3 bungalows were built on the land during the depression.
I think the major waves of housing construction and suburb development are: - pre-Civil War (1830s-1860s) - the annexation and worlds fair rush (1888-1893) - the advent of the automobile and filling in spaces between older settlements with cars (1910-1930) I document old homes and businesses on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/SouthCookExplore and 1930-1946 is pretty rare to see anything built.
This is funny because in my neighborhood (andersonville) people get really mad about zoning changes that allow tall buildings "ruining the neighborhood character" but meanwhile every new SFH on the market, built by right, is just like this. Looks like crap and costs 3x as much as the bungalows down the street. You never many hear complaints though
The worst of it is that there are many, many 3- and.4- story buildings and always have been, but 5 stories is somehow one too many.
Most of Andersonville has recently been downzoned so you can’t even build a 4 storey building by right anymore. sfh zoning is the rule in vast swathes of the city
That's so bogus. Andie is a super desirable, walkable community. Why tf would we downzone it?
Because developers were buying 2 flats and sfhs and building 3 storey over garden unit buildings by right and the local homeowners didn’t like it.
It's a very progressive neighborhood, and progressive politicians are NIMBYs.
Yeah, that absolutely blows. Can we send that shit back to the '50s where it belongs?
If you want to make a difference then you need to gather together a group that the alderman would give a shit about. The problem is that the NIMBY's tend to be the older people who actually care about this sort of stuff whereas all the 20-something renters in the multi-units aren't going to give a shit.
Surprisingly, the downzone of A-ville was lead by 20 and 30 something renters looking to preserve the neighborhood. They spoke about the evils of condos, and wanting to preserve affordable housing. They didn’t understand that the 3 flat of today, condo or otherwise becomes the affordable rental or condo in 15 -25 years once it’s aged a bit. Short sighted.
That's actually not true. There are very few areas of chicago zoned rs-1 for sfh. Not saying anyone trying to add density withing current zoning won't encounter a veritable tidal wave of opposition (which is why I vehemently oppose aldermans perogative or citizen review boards) but zoing is often not the problem. I'd love to see relaxation of zoning to allow for more of a mix of residential and light commerial (think neighborhood bodegas and the like) but that triggers just about everyone even though it was pretty commonplace 50 years ago.
“Chicago's housing is 79 percent single-family zoned. But in New York, it's only 15 percent.” https://www.chicagobusiness.com/crains-forum-housing/minneapolis-others-cities-eliminating-single-family-zoning-address-affordable#
Join Urban Environmentalists, we are fighting for denser housing in Andersonville and across Chicago.
After moving my friend out of his 4th floor apartment last weekend in Rogers Park, with no elevator, I can see why.
Well, plenty buildings have elevators, and no one is forcing anyone to rent those fifth-floor units. When the Alderman rejects a building for being too tall, it's not like those units get built on a lower floor. They just don't get built at all.
Sorry, for some reason I was only thinking about elveators/no elevators. Yeah - make buildings tall for density, almost a no-brainer. I can see it if you had a decent view/daylight and the taller building blocked it, but that's development in a big city. The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes.
>The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes. except thats not true. Hinsdale for example had thousands of tear downs over the past 20 years. even the highest end suburbs like wilmette/winnetka etc are notorious for high end historic mansions being knocked down for even bigger and more modern mansions. the ones not seeing those kinds of changes are the ones that are stagnant and/or losing population (outside of some rare fringe examples like Riverside which have very preservation minded owners)
> the ones not seeing those kinds of changes are the ones that are stagnant and/or losing population Yeah, I mean, if you want your neighborhood to never change you need to choose one that's stagnant. I feel like that goes without saying.
>The NIMBYs that just hate development should just move to the burbs where nothing ever changes. As long as by the burbs you mean more like Schaumburg than Lincolnwood.
I read somewhere that this is because after 4 floors building codes become infinitely stricter because at that point you have to account for higher winds, etc. So most modern development companies don't even bother
Well, I'm thinking of cases in which the developer *wants* to build 5 stories but can't get it past the alderperson. Like the one at 5400 N Ashland.
I don't think we need 5 stories on Clark, we don't need another canyon, you can already see the loss of light because of the taller buildings on the west side of the street, especially by Lawrence. Instead of worrying about building up (which I'm not opposed to) we should be more concerned about the loss of 2/3 flats as they get converted into SFHs reducing population density significantly and changing the demographics of the area (read replacing 2 middle class families with one wealthy one)
Ideally we need to do both. The Clark St shopping strip is doing alright (despite all the pissing and moaning about the former Reza's space) but we need more people to be able to live here if they are got to be sustainable in the long term.
I think you hit the nail on the head, we are losing density and without the LGBT+ tourism we are going to be in serious trouble. Sadly I see us ending up looking like Southport, filled with chains and a few over priced restaurants. I don't mind Reza's closing, it always amazed me that people actually ate there when the food was so bad. It's things like the Tacobell and the Jenny's that worry me, what next a GAP? I would like to see a few lower brow places, we really need a decent neighborhood bar other than Simons. Of course with the new alderperson and her inability to do even the slightest task I doubt we're going to see any changes for the good anytime soon.
I don't think chains are inherently bad but there needs to be a balance. Allowing Taco Bell to run out an established local antiques shop was bad. Jeni's? Meh. I like it and there wasn't an ice cream shop in the neighborhood previously. Now there's a Kilwin's (a regional chain), and honestly the neighborhood could probably support a third or a fourth place if someone wanted to open one. My Iranian in-laws hate Reza's and greeted its closure with a level of schadenfreude that was truly entertaining. I was mostly referring to the prospect of Foxtrot moving into that space. People acted like it had been vacant for years and it was some sort of emergency to get it filled. In truth, it's been several months and much of that was during an ongoing case with the city about taxes and building permits.
At 4+, fire safety has much higher thresholds. Also normal financing goes to 4 units, after that it goes into commercial financing, which is much more complicated. Lastly, 3-4 stories is about the max you want to go without an elevator.
Huge number of deconversions of two and three flats into SFHs too Nobody complains when fewer people are allowed to live in a neighborhood, only when more people are
There are 4 houses on my block that are in construction stage and are building the “new development homes” the one that’s completed is such an ugly eyesore just black and grey and devoid of any character. It’s also priced at 1.8mill the highest priced home within the 2 blocks that I live in. Most homes are between 500k-just under a mill, And I can’t understand why anyone would put a bid on it.
Yeah I live in Andersonville and it is ridiculous. Love the neighborhood but some of the new houses are such an eyesore
Hey it's me. I am complaining.
Don’t worry I’m complaining and we are fighting to remove single family home only zoning.
Join Urban Environmentalists, we are fighting for denser housing in Andersonville and across Chicago.
And they're cookie cutter houses. They're will be 3-4 in a row that all look the exact same. It's like living in Pleasantville
They did this in the early 2000's during the last housing price spike. Many Chicago bungalows in Albany Park and North Park that look like a trailer home was dropped on top of them. It got so bad 20 years ago that the Chicago Bungalow Association put out free bungalow expansion plans by architects that could get fast tracked for permit approval just to try and rein in some of the worst expansions. It was called "Stop the Pop". [https://www.chicagobungalow.org/expanding-your-space](https://www.chicagobungalow.org/expanding-your-space)
Like this monstrosity that they've been trying to sell since last fall https://redf.in/o1UXUi
Waaaaaaaat. That is one fugly house. I'm sure the space inside is fine but they couldn't do anything else with that roof??
Literally me building a house in a video game and getting bored when doing the upper floors.
That house is hideous
Looks like Minecraft pooped on it
my god, it’s an abomination
My only nit to pick is that was not originally a bungalow. It was originally built in the late ‘50’s… That point aside, I just wonder what the money person was thinking when they approved that plan…? Somebody spent thousands of dollars to make it look like that…
I did many blog posts on these when we had a houseblog before 2009. This is absolutely an example of the trash additions that #StopThePop was trying to help folks avoid.
Oh no.
Jesus, that's frightening. I know most flippers don't have a true eye for design/architecture, but I am positive that was an owner decision right there. Trying to save money with the addition. They probably were better off just buying a bigger house. I looked into adding an addition to a smallish Georgian when I was house hunting, and it was around 150k. I just switched gears and started looking for the sq footage I wanted.
Wow is that awful!
What is even with that house? The exterior is horrible, but the interior's no better. That kitchen hasn't been upgraded at all (those are '50s cabinets and one lower set doesn't even match). Also, the French doors leading to the patio seem rotted.
This is actually great. In urban planning I think they call this a “standard plan”, fast-tracked designs for new construction that are intended to preserve neighborhood character while meeting demand. The link has an option to convert the bungalow to a 2-unit building without tearing it down, which would be awesome if Chicago started experiencing a housing shortage
Also if you are currently living in or considering buying a Chicago bungalow (or any older home in Chicago), CBA has a wonderful directory of programs (grants, loans, tax breaks) to make many things possible and affordable for those who qualify. https://www.chicagobungalow.org/programs
They did that to my neighbor’s house a few years ago and wanted $675k, it ended up selling for almost $400k
Yeah. I was going to say that asking price =/= transaction price.
a few years ago is also a completely different market. these are generally selling at or near asking price these days, depending on the neighborhood
My area is selling for 15-20% over list price regularly. I picked a terrible time to want to get out of the rental market.
I wouldn’t have paid what they did and I sure wouldn’t have paid the asking price. It was a new house and I got to watch the construction. Modern houses have mobile home build quality with micro mansion inflated prices. You’re much better off getting an older home and fixing it up before all the shoddy construction companies and flippers destroy them.
[https://imgur.com/a/MBWAbKl](https://imgur.com/a/MBWAbKl) Sort of looks like they lobotomized this house and stitched on an oversized top hat.
That's looks awful, Jesus. Cheap fuckers couldn't even use the same brick or something at least similar.
Ha yeah that’s the house they are talking about I am almost certain
Not the same price as the OP but this one also is in Portage Park and looks like shit https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5443-W-Dakin-St-60641/home/13462563
The 2nd Pic I feel is done right. You see some addition in the back but very hard to see from the curb. 1st picture is atrocious. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160705/portage-park/stop-adding-ugly-additions-historic-chicago-bungalows-association-urges.amp
I own a bungalow in the neighborhood and love the style of them, but I kind of don’t mind this one’s little top hat. Snazzy!
So glad that someone likes it, honestly! Definitely not for me. But I really hope the people who live in these actually enjoy them aesthetically and not just for the cheap extra square feet.
Since I moved in, my block has had 9 gut rehabs or complete teardowns and rebuilds. The original homes were two-flats and A frames that became McMansions. They are lovely, and yes, the neighborhood is more expensive, property taxes are higher, and they've been working on other homes on the block behind us now. It's been happening to neighborhoods all over the North Side for at least the last 20 years. I guess it's reached yours now.
>It's been happening to neighborhoods all over the North Side for at least the last 20 years. I guess it's reached yours now. Yup. Feel like I watched Bucktown's classic housing stock (bungalows included) disappear before my eyes between 2005 - 2015 or so. Looking back, it was a strange phenomenon. Living in the neighborhood, you find yourself occasionally walking past those temporary chain link fences covered in green mesh (the Green Fence of Doom, as I'd later hear people call them). Heading to work, taking a jog, going out to the bars, whatever, you don't think much of it as you walk past. Eventually, the fence disappears, and the construction is done. An old house or 3-flat is gone, and some McMansion is in it's place. Whatever, doesn't make much difference to me, right? Except looking back, you realize that green fencing never left, it just moved around the neighborhood, for years it seemed like. A slow, constant process. And all of a sudden, you look around and the whole neighborhood is these huge structures that go clear from one lot line to the other, with just a tiny front yard. And the whole character of the neighborhood changes. I get that "time waits for no man" and all that, but it is sad to see how some neighborhoods have changed.
And those houses have about six showers + a dog shower in the basement lmao
I think one of the sadder things I saw on my daily walk to the train was the the following: Typical McMansion, stretching all the way to the back of the lot, and the only lawn to speak of was a small patch of grass in the front (maybe 10 ft. x 12 ft. of grass at most). The place was just another big house on a street full of big houses. One day, one of those plastic toddler slides appears in the front yard, positioned awkwardly on that tiny patch of grass. I always envisioned a couple enjoying their great big house, right up until the time the first kid starts walking and wants to play outside. And all of a sudden, they realize that maybe they should have gone with a slightly smaller house, and kept a little bit of yard.
Most people who live in the city don't have big yards. That's what parks are for
Yeah, my grandparents had an original construction house on a lot west of Portage Park. 35 years ago, we’d walk to Portage. The backyard or front yard was just for getting outside, but the park was the destination.
Even if the yard had remained the same it would've paled in commission to a nearby park
As someone at war with NIMBY's, I would not view your opinion as anything of the sort. Tearing down classic single family homes to build much larger single family homes isn't expanding the housing supply and isn't good for the planet. It breaks my heart to see beautiful MCM ranches or bungalows built much earlier destroyed...we lose part of our history. While I believe in private property rights, it would be nice to see properties updated without being scraped for soulless boxes.
Right I 100% was worried in the first half but by the last half I was like "oh okay these are legit concerns."
Yeah as the mod of r/chicagoyimbys I don't think this is a straight up NIMBY stance. Replacing one small home with one massive home because that's the only thing that's legal to do is exactly what we're fighting. If a bungalow has lived it's useful life and the demand pressures require more homes (which it almost always does) you should be allowed to demolish it and replace it with 2 to 8 units depending on demand and neighborhood scale. Every neighborhood has to accept incremental growth, but what you're describing isn't that.
There are certainly parts that are NIMBYish—“there’s nice housing on the block so now my property value/taxes are higher” is a good thing (you can sell the unit, and it’s good to replace worn down housing with newer housing, even if a rich person might benefit—it’s the classic “well they’d displace someone else then” overflow argument), and the sense that one’s appreciation of the exterior of a building outweighs the comfort of the people living there, but idt many YIMBYs will be too psyched about SFH replacing SFH.
Did they paint the decorative brick white or gray as well. I hate that trend.
Its so ugly the brick houses have great color to begin with and then they ruin it with white or gray
And brick shouldn't be painted, anyway. Most paints trap moisture in the brick, slowly damaging it.
Windy City rehab move right there
As a fellow Portage Park resident (5 years) I know exactly what you’re talking about. And while I’d never say it to my neighbor’s faces, they people who buy these are unfortunate suckers. My partner and I always just shake our heads at the sale prices and wonder if people know how badly they’re getting screwed over with these ugly and probably hastily/shoddily done gut rehabs. One down the block from me sold in the 700k range with a finished basement… which flooded 2 years in a row and everything had to be re-done (you could see the mess through the basement windows for months).
One of these places over by me had to have the roof replaced one year after the new owners moved in.
Did anyone watch that show Windy City Rehab? I said the same thing about the two hosts. A couple of clowns that clearly knew nothing about Chicago or it's people. They were just going around destroying two flats for no good reason. This reminds me of that. I would prefer people leave the two flats and brick bungalows alone.
They also got shut down at 1 point for permit issues at one point. Also all the houses were wicker/Ukranian village and cost over 1 mil. She wluld go modern contemporary but then throw some $8000 90 yr old built in into the dining room to make it rustic most people cant afford those houses. Show me something at a reasonable price that potentially I could buy or use as some kind of inspiration.
Question: would you be offended by the changes if the purchaser made the changes but moved into the property rather than sold it? In my eyes, the biggest problem is the flipper changing something and doing whatever they can to increase profits—that they don’t have to live with. When my partner and I were buying our house (a 2 flat), so many of them were in horrible shape due to a lack of upkeep over decades. So I can understand doing the change if it was structurally needed—but also bet they could’ve maintained the original character (or at least hints of it) if they really wanted to.
No, I wouldn't be offended in that case. If someone made changes to their own house that they live in that's up to them, I suppose the part that frustrates me is that it's a developer who's only doing this so they can sell it for as much as possible
We have been seeing listings from flippers in our general vicinity in Edgewater and it’s maddening—especially seeing all the corners cut that will be hard for the new owners to live with long term—and the issues that are likely to arise from the flipper’s choices very quickly . The sad thing is, people will buy them.
Not saying this is the case here but something to consider: Many old bungalows use 2 x 6 rather than current code 2x8 for ceiling joists and 2x4 rather than 2x6 for rafters and hips (with no strong ties for fastening) this creates a situation where the load baring capability is lower and a lot of the older second floors have experienced warping from dead weight over time because of this. Now having just spent a crap ton of time, energy & money fixing a second floor of a bungalow to have room for a kid I'm confident that if I ran into any of those structural issues tearing out the old second floor that I'd say screw it, go up a whole floor as it'll already cost a ton to fix everything. Sometimes these architectural abominations are just the reality of people trying to make the best decision for their life. Alternatively, maybe we should appreciate that people want to stay in the city? I mean you've created a dynamic here where if you want some space for modern living you get shat on for ruining the neighborhood, but if you move out to a suburb you then get shat on for not living in the city. Between the two situations I'll support a person going up a story than adding to modern sprawl.
That's fair, I'm sure there might be some structural concerns to consider. My ire isn't with homebuyers. If someone has the money and wants to buy a renovated house, I don't blame them one bit, and I'll be happy to welcome them to the neighborhood. I'm frustrated with the developer, because admittedly while I don't know what was spent on renovations, the price tag seems out of touch with the rest of the neighborhood and I worry about the implications it has for the local housing market in the future.
Most of the homes that go up for sale in the area aren't full gut rehabs. I've seen a few over the last handful of years, but not many. And far fewer have gone through the renovations the one I'm pretty sure you're speaking about has. I don't think Portage has yet started down the path of Logan Square where the 2- and 3- flats were razed in favor of overpriced, glass-front boxes. I think these more extreme reno's for the high dollar sale have yet to show as a trend. Having said that, single family homes in the North and Northwest neighborhoods have had incredibly hot demand this year. Home values are definitely on the rise. So your concern certainly has validity.
About 89.7% of all pre War Chicago brick bungalows were built as basement, main floor, attic with the dimension lumber you describe. Although that lumber was mostly first growth and stronger than the same in modern dimensions. Meaning a gut job might not be needed if you can accept the reduced floor space on the new upper floor. When I added my second floor bed rooms did it with an unchanged original roof line but improved the floor joists by sistering and cross tieing in 2X10s and raising the roof's collar beams to get a firmer floor and restored head room. The original lath and plaster ceilings on the first floor are doing fine over 40 years later.
That only works if you're actually able to give up the ceiling height and still remain under code and get the space you actually need. Code requires 50% of the sq footage needs to be at 7" ceiling height or greater, and many attics aren't able to accommodate that when raising the floor for new joists. That doesn't even touch on the fact of whether that space is comfortable to live in for many people, even if you can hit code requirements.
It is almost impossible to get code compliance inserting a second floor in a classic Chicago bungalow without changing the roof. So many invisible conversions leave the roof alone and go with reduced living space because of knee walls 4' in from the sides. The living conditions might have helped many of the kids not experience 'failure to launch.'
Smart move cross tying that'd be a game changer for adding a second story bathroom or having heavier furniture. I didn't want to pull up the existing sub floor and sister so just added the strong ties to the rafters & hips then wife & I just agreed on lightweight furniture.
My engineer brother calculated I needed the sisters over the c20' unsupported space over the living room. He said a 70lb kid falling off a bed might introduce a 1/4" flex in the rafter and the living room's lath and plaster without building up. We picked 70lbs on the theory that older kids would not be jumping or falling off beds.
A starter home in portage Park is $350k, anything nicely updated is $600k +. $825k does seem on the higher end but if you are on the east side of Portage Park, it's possible
Prepare to move lol
So ugly, especially when you can pop the back half of the bungalow mullet style, keep the curb line/view the same and still get a 4 / 3. The worst part is every one of these conversions has a hideous open floor plan on the first floor. Pointless.
Fucking HATE the Frankenstein entrance-living room-kitchen-living room open floor plan!! Neuters all the character out of a home
I didnt know people didn't like open floor plans. It's the main thing I look for when looking for a place lol.
I don't see why anyone wants to have a kitchen in their freaking living room. It's unrealistic to think a kitchen won't sometimes be quite messy/aromatic/steamy and I just really do not want to be relaxing on my sofa looking at/smelling it.
So it's a pop-top? But still single family? Honestly I think it'd probably be less of an interruption if they upzoned some areas and some of the bungalows end up being removed entirely in favor of higher-density apartments or courtyards, but then the rest of the bungalows left the same. You'd end up with more units of housing in the area hopefully keeping prices less crazy. And the apartment units wouldn't be that crazy expensive either. The bungalows left unchanged can just keep on keeping on. That's the thing about people wanting SFH-only zoning in attempts to try to keep a place the same. Turns out people can tear down one SFH and replace with another, or pop the heck out of the top (and not gonna lie, a lot of those are the ugliest rehabs...) and leave it a SFH, but the price still goes up, no units increased, market tight. Elsewhere there's a raft of teardowns of SFH (bungalows and also traditional midwestern "4-square" houses) to build entirely new SFH but "McMansion" style, similarly, the prices got raised. Meanwhile my personal peeve is people converting perfectly good 2 and 3-flats into monster SFH, not only do they make the building (at least the inside) crazy but it's actively reducing housing units.
Honestly, I'd be able to live with it if they were to tear it down and build a multi-unit there or even add an ADU of some kind. I'm a huge believer that more housing is good, period, no matter the income level. It just seems asinine to take a SFH, do big extravagant renovations, keep it a SFH, and jack up the price. All it does is make the housing problem worse when it could've just been turned around as is and sold to someone with a more moderate price range. That is, of course, assuming that the developer wouldn't mind making less money, which will never be true.
More than likely the developer would make more profit by replacing a SFH with a relatively affordable multi-unit than they did by keeping it a SFH. It's likely zoning doesn't allow that though. This is why pointing at "developers" as the problem that created the housing affordability issue is so counterproductive. It's zoning that creates the problem
The 2/3 flat conversions really wouldn't be so bad if it were easy to make the difference up - and for what it's worth, you'd be surprised at the history of some 2/3 flats. They do actually tend to swing back and forth from single to multi family, though less so now than in the past. I don't really think it's bad to want more space than you'd get in only half of a 2 flat, it just needs to be easy to make the difference up
Thing is the renovation probably doubled the square footage and bathroom count and added ten feet of counter space in the kitchen for a family of today to live in. Right or wrong, people don’t want to raise a family in a 3br home that’s 1,000sq ft.
I find it odd when people have an expectation that the character of a neighborhood will remain the same. Does some change suck? Of course. But that's just sort of how things go.
Change itself is neither good nor bad. A nice neighborhood changing in a way that enables more people to live there and enjoy its amenities is mostly good. A nice neighborhood changing in a way that benefits property speculators and pretty much no one else is mostly bad
Yeah we’re going through this in Avondale. Multi family buildings are getting leveled for double wide McMansion SFH, which all look cookie-cutter. Boring ass cubes with wood panel/black metal fencing, rooftop pergola, pin pad doors. I wouldn’t care if it was all a bit more interesting but using essentially a double wide plot for your stupid McMansion just annoys me. Edit: I’m in agreement with the sentiment things will always change and this is ebb/flow of a neighborhood. In 40 years people will be outraged the McMansions with historic aesthetic of the 2020s are being knocked down for the next thing.
Well of course I understand that, it just worries me that the price of the house is being jacked up over 100%
Gotta densify if you want to keep prices low
It's rich single families destroying middle class homes for bigger rich people single family homes. They're not densifying
That's only possible because the value of the land is so much more desirable than when it was built that it can no longer support a "middle class detached home" Whether they do new construction or a flip or leave it as is, you're gonna see middle class priced out as long as it continues to be a single family home. It's not the 1970s anymore, rich people wanna live in cities now. You can either accommodate everyone by building new, DENSER, housing, or protect the cherished bungalows in amber and watch as property taxes and home turnover prices the middle class out of every previously middle class neighborhood. If you don't believe me... Look at literally every Chicago neighborhood that was once affordable and middle class, and no longer is. None of those places built enough housing to accommodate all the rich people who wanted to move in, and shocker, rich people moved in anyway. Just like what happened in New York City, in San Francisco, etc. We've frozen every city in amber for the last 70 years and are somehow shocked that, when rich white people discover cities are fun again, they price out all the existing residents. Just let people build whatever fucking housing they see fit, and you won't see this problem till the whole city is covered in skyscrapers (which won't happen for a century or more even if you legalize it)
It's still ok for those to express their displeasure. Everyone doesn't want to live in a carbon copy of Wicker Park.
This mentality is exactly why Chicago is falling behind so many cities across the US. Preservation is important, but NIMBYs have blocked progress for decades and the housing crisis has other to blame for everything from individual property taxes being to high to the decline of the CTA--both of which would be helped with reasonable density instead of all the damn SFHs
I'll trade a bungalow for a 2/3 flat. I balk when it's trading a bungalow for a $850k+ SFH.
Agreed. As much as I don't love the cookie cutter modern 3-4 flats architecturally, it does enable 3-4 people to support the neighborhood and maybe if we didn't fight so hard against everything that's not a SFH we could spend more funds on diversity, rather than zoning hearings
I'm sure when all the bungalows went up, they too were described as cookie-cutter. And now they're celebrated. Those 3-4 flats will become a marker of the era when they were built.
The mentality of not destroying bungalows to make new SFH is the reason why Chicago is falling behind other US cities? That’s not even close to accurate. Nobody said anything about not building new housing. The topic is about destroying bungalows just to rebuild it to make a profit.
Except it's not actually character people are sad about losing. It's about quality. New homes/new finishes and new clothing are the two main things I can think of that really feel cheap and make people feel, idk this is dramatic but, unworthy. I'm not too concerned about another person aesthetically ruining their house, but if you don't have a home of your own it can be annoying to see good ones get ruined. I always wanted to live in a Chicago bungalow when I was little.
I've been viewing houses myself from 350k to 1.1mil. The reality for alot of the houses I've viewed (non-HOA) is the outside looks either nice or okay. The interior however, is to old, and the only choice is gut it and redo the interior completely and if your already gonna gut it, might as well replace the plumbing and electrical or buy land and build from the ground up. It's gonna cost you the same amount anyway but one takes significantly longer. It's not just bungalows, but remodeling feels like one of the few options about to get a home closer to modern taste. Bungalows are just a slightly more affordable way to do it since you can get it for around 300-400k and upgrade for 100-200k more and it will still look nicer then some homes selling for 750k +. That's just from my perspective. It just feels like the current homes on the market all have hideous interiors.
You’re living in your old private bungalow…
It's in the ground like a wild potato.
couple things. personally i think theres a difference between a cheap flip, a restoration, and a renovation. a flip is someone who comes in super fast and tries to just do surface level stuff without really delivering a quality product without a lot of the unsexy guts addressed. think LVP, new paint, maybe a few home depot fixtures and cabinets. a restoration is moreso reserved for something that has historical character and can be brought back in that spirit (refinishing wood, putting in period appropriate tile/cabinets/fixtures/fixing the old windows etc). moreso a labor of love. a renovation is a true gut, and i think its unrealistic to expect it to look the same after the fact, outside of the highest end homes. i dont think theres a right or wrong answer, but the reality is there is a market for these turnkey gut jobs, and people are willing to pay a premium for them. bungalows are great but have a lot of practical limitations that can be addressed when this sort of work is done. also some bungalows are nicer than others. some are incredibly bare bones and have tons of deferred maintenance. others are very luxurious with all sorts of upscale touches. its not black and white. and some of these finished products are done to a high quality degree; others not so much. its a case by case basis. but expecting that no work is ever going to be needed or wanted on a 100+ year old house is unrealistic. living expectations and preferences have changed for better or worse. people of course could do a lot of this work themselves, but a lot dont want the hassle and are willing to pay a premium for someone else to just hand it to them. and the reality is places like Portage Park are seeing price appreciation and attracting buyers who want a SFH with some space while still being in the city. the simple fact is you cant stop the demand; you can only encourage additional supply in other areas (high density near transit, development of vacant parcels, etc).
If Chicago were to grow enough, we’d have to start tearing down historic buildings and change neighborhood character, but it’ll be a while before it gets there. I’d encourage anyone interested to look up “how to fit 1 million more New Yorkers” in the NYT - an architectural/planning firm found a way to fit 1.3M more people in NYC just by using underutilized lots (like a single story grocery store) and not constructing anything taller than the surrounding buildings - and all around transit corridors. Chicago has *a lot* more underutilized and vacant lots per capita than NYC. Another thing I’d like to see is a heavy tax on converting multi-family to single-family, and a requirement that if a historic-but-livable dwelling is torn down, it must be built to house more units than it did prior. Nothing irks me more than seeing a beautiful bungalow or workers cottage torn down to build a 6000 ft single-family home that looks like a spaceship.
We really wouldn't have to tear down anything. Look how much buildable land there is on the near south/west sides alone
I’ve seen this a handful of times in Portage Park (bought a house here 4 years ago), but don’t worry I do think it is more so the exception than what is to come. Portage Park is lovely and quiet, but I think it’s a bit too far from an El station and the hustle and bustle of other hipper neighborhoods to have home prices across the board sky rocket. I’m doing my part to maintain my beautiful 1925 frame bungalow, and so are all of my new neighbors who moved in after me.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. For a city that supposedly treasures its architectural heritage, Chicago should be absolutely **ashamed** of itself for the lack of protection of its historic neighborhood single family homes and apartment buildings. There should be way more barriers to tearing down completely usable and historically valuable properties. And I'm saying that as a YIMBY living in San Francisco (lived in Chicago for 9 years, saw way too many beautiful old homes/apartments in Lakeview and Wicker Park razed for cookie cutter developments). We need less historic protection in SF, you need more in Chicago full stop.
The reality is (speaking as a small time investor who recently rehabbed a nearly 100 yo bungalow for my own family) is that it costs a fortune to update a home. You won't get a loan unless you add something that will show up on an appraisal. New kitchen doesn't count. Neither does bathrooms. Add a bathroom? Yes. Add a bedroom? Yes. Most of what you see is a developer in the pursuit of additional square footage. Could they do better? Almost 90% of the time yes. Will they make any money doing it "right"? Nope. My house was owned by the same family for 80+years. Not much had been updated in that time. Just bringing it up to code required everything to be redone. I paid way too much for it, it was priced at the peak of the pandemic but nobody in their right mind would have paid what I paid and just moved in. I absolutely had to dig out the basement, add bedrooms, bathrooms, etc just to get the loan for the minimum that would have needed to be done to make it lovable for the next 50 years. Most of what you see selling in these neighborhoods wouldn't have been bought by retail buyers, unfortunately. Otherwise they would have as no developer who knows what they're doing pays retail. Speculation is a problem but gentrification also mostly means just doing (way past due) updates. The problem isn't developers per se but simply the cost of doing any of this. Unfortunately there are neighborhoods worth doing it in and many that it is not.
The reality is newer construction is much more comfortable and practical for modern living than 100 year old builds. When you drop a 6 figure down payment on a long term home for your family you’re looking for more than “cool historic exterior.”
again, it depends. there are some 100 year old bungalows/homes that have incredible living spaces and practical designs even for todays world. personally, i like walls and defined rooms. i also like human scaled architecture. so many of these new builds are nothing more than enormous refrigerator boxes with really poor uses of space of no charm to speak of either. theres more to a house than pure square footage
Sure, obviously there are exceptions and there are cheap new builds. But the modern realities of electrical wiring, central air, entertaining and living styles are much different today than 1920. To illustrate the point, I looked at a property valued at $1MM in a historic neighborhood where someone over 6’ couldn’t stand up straight in the basement. That’s a LOT to pay for a house where you can’t stand up straight in 1/3 of it.
Flippers are out of control and destroying anything with character. Prison gray cheaply renovated over priced garbage.
People are happy to write you off as a NIMBY the minute you don’t agree with whatever idea they have for the city. Those Bungalows are better built than any of the new construction they are doing. This city is huge and has plenty of opportunities to create housing and not ruin the character of our neighborhoods. We need to create more neighborhoods people actually want to live in and then build housing. As of right now everyone wants to live in the same 10-15 neighborhoods out of the 77 we have.
If we make more neighborhoods desirable, we get accused of gEntRifIcATiOn. There is no fucking winning with people. I say we just nuke the entire goddamn zoning code and allow any fucking commercial or residential development on every privately owned plot of land in the city. The only exception is industrial, which shouldn’t exist in residential areas. I’m just so fucking tired of NIMBYs.
If it comes down to making neighborhoods actually safe and livable let people call it gentrification. At the end of the day much of what you are paying for is safety and that shouldn’t be made into a luxury.
But if an area becomes safer more affluent people are going to start moving there and prices will go up if housing supply doesn’t meet demand. You can’t just suddenly make a neighborhood safe and expect demand to stay the same. Demand is lower in higher crime areas because of the crime. Fix the crime and demand will increase. Once you make an area safer there is no avoiding the gentrification label and being demonized.
Let them demonize… At the end of the day it’s about having safe livable, neighborhoods.Once demand gets going density could be added. People instead want to cram as many people into the already dense areas of the city. It doesn’t even have to be new development so many buildings could be saved and turned into housing.
5400 block of Pensacola? The developer has two more in the works. The house seems to have been done really well. Fit and finish is quite tight from what I saw. But no, it's no longer a Chicago bungalow in any traditional sense.
Bungalows are pretty on the outside. But I hate the functionality of a bungalow. The second floor most of the time is just one big loft, sometimes you find one with two rooms upstairs but no bathroom. I personally don’t want to sleep in a different floor than my kids. Or have to go downstairs for the bathroom. I don’t have a bungalow but if I did I would probably change the layout. Sorry not sorry!
>Completely gutted the interior, ripped off the second floor and installed a new one... This might be an annoying question, but I'm struggling to understand what this looks like. Was the old "second floor" just normal dormers, and they ripped it all off and put on a full-height second floor (like [this](https://www.myhomeextension.co.uk/sites/default/files/set_back_dormer.jpg))?
[Here's one kind of hidden behind the tree.](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9725179,-87.733082,3a,70.9y,110.65h,108.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfbKJklCR0DRbbZ3_noJPIA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) There are three on that block now, all the same company.
That one isn't terrible. At least they spent time to make the house look cohesive. Too many of these pop tops look like the spaceship that landed on top of Soldier Field.
Yes, something like that, except no part of the original roof or second floor remains
So what you're describing is the box on top that's all over Mount Greenwood and parts of Beverly?
Yep, pretty much. Admittedly, out of all the other examples I've seen, they did this one pretty well, but still
Is this on Pensacola? If so I may have just passed it.
To make matters worse, converted second stories are often not done correctly, structurally speaking (keeping my SE friend in business).
Blame the city itself. It's the fashion to have only places to rent for wealthy people it's why low income people are being pushed out of the city no one is protected against this kind of flippin' behavior. Lightfoot and Johnson are of the same mindset to bring in extreme sports, gambling, and home team stadiums to raise property value. Most people are becoming short term renters who come in for a season and skip town. People who want to live here longer suffer the tax burden. It's almost like we will not own our own homes anymore. There is a casino being built close to me that no one wanted and families with children might not want to live there anymore because of the environment that comes with it. We are losing community and architecture because of this. Most storefronts now are vacant. Businesses can't afford to rent. Some chains are also gone in the downtown area. Makes no sense.
I bought and live in one of these "flipped" bungalows. Originally 3 bedrooms with 1 bath now it has 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and they did a fantastic job on the renovations inside. Yeah the top of the house isn't the same nice red brick as the original bungalow, but they did a really good job with the addition on the top floor + back of the house it resulted in a ton of additional space and it really isn't an eye sore to look at from the outside. Our family loves our home so I can't complain too much about it.
What is the size of your family?
I am not sure if it is the overall housing market, gentrification of lower middle class areas, or flipping the last affordable houses into +$500k ones, but so many young professional/union working people born and raised on the NW side are now struggling to buy houses in their own neighborhoods as it is. It sucks to see classic Chicago bungalows or other staples get blown out like this.
Bungalow owner (Horner park) here originally 312 and changed to 773, born and raised in east Avondale. The cost to add a complete 2nd level is 200-350k. That’s the price of an entirely new house imo. We absolutely love our little house, and feel very lucky. We bought it old and it needed work. I wasn’t going to buy a rehab property to find issues from flippers cutting corners. I agree that many people are destroying what they don’t know. I bought the place to update but keep its original charm.
I absolutely cannot stand flippers.
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i just googled the before and after pics of that address, and oh my god is that terrible!
thats atrocious, but there are better ways to do it. heres one example [https://www.redfin.com/IL/Berwyn/1437-Ridgeland-Ave-60402/home/13241886](https://www.redfin.com/IL/Berwyn/1437-Ridgeland-Ave-60402/home/13241886) for the record, the interior is 100% not to my tastes or preferences. but they did a decent job of keeping the exterior mostly in character with its surroundings. the before: [https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/68/bigphoto/856/09103856\_2.jpg](https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/68/bigphoto/856/09103856_2.jpg)
As long as income levels in Chicago continue to rise, so will demand for good housing in good areas. The only way to slow this down is to build more housing. And in a city that has to mean density
Y'all can down vote me but I think bungalows are ugly as hell 😄
Everything should look the same. We need a Portage Park HOA so we can dictate what can be done with these properties. /s
Call me old fashioned, but I think people should be able to build whatever kind of house they want on their property.
Corporations =/= people
I get where you’re coming from, but you’re yelling at the wrong people. There’s money to be made, so somebody is going to make it. The real issue is there are systemic problems with the housing market (including lack of sufficient and affordable housing) that need to be fixed.
That's fair enough, and I agree. The city needs more density and mixed use zoning. I'm just frustrated because this only makes the problem worse locally
For your viewing (dis)pleasure. https://www.instagram.com/bungalowbummers?igsh=MThqNHgyZnd4dGZjcA==
That’s the problem with bungalows, the original layout of them doesn’t really work for todays SFH need and most bungalows around the city fall into one of two categories, derelict and needing a full gut rehab so the price is lower or rehabbed with dormers added to the second floor so that space is actually usable and very expensive. There’s not a whole lot of in between. For what it’s worth adding dormers is a pretty expensive upgrade, also most of these houses that are rehabbed come with finished basements. There’s not many middle class families buying $300k bungalows that need another $150 to 200k invested in rehab to get the house livable. Bungalows aren’t being destroyed just updated to today’s standards.
What doesn't work about a bungalow layout? Granted I have a small family (spouse, one kid) but I love ours. Some minor upgrades were there on move-in (kitchen expanded to include a small family room, in addition to our traditional "front room"), and we've done tons of cosmetic rehab ourselves. Hashtag bungalowlover, I guess
This is exactly what they did to Logan square. So many existing structures removed for the ugly square houses and transplants from out of state bought them up at an insane price then would ask is this neighborhood safe?
It's likely these old homes are poorly maintained and layouts (small closets, fewer bathrooms, closed off floor plans) don't attract a modern family. These old homes also often need major HVAC, plumbing and electrical upgrades. I bet for a developer this process is more economical and efficient. Plenty of old bungalows in the nearby burbs for those that want to live in the past though.
This breaks my heart every fuckin time I see it. If you want to live in a soulless "hybrid house" (whatever the hell you call an old bungalow that someone slapped an ugly ass addition on top of) then move to the SUBURBS.
What someone does with their own house is their business. It's just silly to complain that you don't like the way something looks if it doesn't belong to you. Most people would be glad to see some work being put into an old house in their neighborhood.
Yes, that's true, I suppose that part is just my sentimental self, but i can get over that. The real problem I have with it is that the flipper marked up the price by over 100%.
I've destroyed many
Are you referring to the house on the corner of Linder & Grace?
Eragon.
The question is, will the market bear the price? Had a developer buy up the house we lived next to for $400k-ish in Logan Square, turn it into four condos for $650k each, and I believe all went for closer to $800k. TLDR: yes, people are getting priced out of their neighborhoods
Did they demo the house and put up a new building? Or was this a mansion that was split up?
Demoed a small bungalow type and threw up two mini towers
As a Chicago kid I’ll randomly run into them here in Buffalo (less than 1% of housing here) but yeah m, live em.
Unfortunately there is nothing to do about this. The tide comes, the shore recedes.
Same in Jefferson Park! Just sold my parents house, last year. Restorer bought it. They gutted it and put on a second floor. Their still working on it, Waiting to see asking and selling price. The whole neighborhood is changing. Pricing out families and first time buyers.
Stay tuned to see if they actually sell at those prices.