Where do tree hugging, vegetarian liberals belong in north Chicago? (Evanston: for sale, buy)

[Anthera]

Originally Posted by nanannie

New home construction,- I HATE the ones that have a garage as the first and formost thing one sees. Just awful. I suppose thats to cram as much house as possible into the lot.

They are called "snouts" and many NS communities have banned them. Too bad they weren't banned 10 years ago.


I agree with Chet that the majority of new construction is an improvement, simply because the vast majority of homes torn down were run down, unworkable, or just plain ugly. Very few nice attractive homes in good(updated) condition are torn down. Those homes usually sell for far less than an attractive home on the same size lot.

[Calidreemer]

This is why I brought up the Pie House in Deerfield - this is an example of a greedy developer who took a sliver of land and built something because he could. He obviously didn't care about the neighborhood and Deerfield didn't have proper zoning in place to prevent this type of building.

I think some new construction is nice while other new construction homes seem to be slapped up without much thought to the look and scale of the neighborhood.

I guess this thread is digressing from the OP's request for information. Maybe somebody has some additional advice for the OP?


"This recent addition to Deerfield's housing stock has been nicknamed the pie house because it is shaped like a wedge of pie. Although it's hard to tell from the photo, the east side of the house measures 3 feet at the start.

Amazingly the builders are asking $325,000 for this house!

Deerfield has recently put restrictions on how big a home can be but they forgot to put restrictions on how small a home can be."

[nanannie]

Originally Posted by Anthera

They are called "snouts" and many NS communities have banned them. Too bad they weren't banned 10 years ago.
.

Thanks, I learned a new word today.

Cali, I agree, that "pie house" is just ugly/silly/ridicuous. It would work better as an office space in town.

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Calidreemer

This is why I brought up the Pie House in Deerfield ....Amazingly the builders are asking $325,000 for this house!...

I would pay 150 tops for that place.

[thePR]

Originally Posted by Calidreemer

This is why I brought up the Pie House in Deerfield - this is an example of a greedy developer who took a sliver of land and built something because he could. He obviously didn't care about the neighborhood and Deerfield didn't have proper zoning in place to prevent this type of building.

I think some new construction is nice while other new construction homes seem to be slapped up without much thought to the look and scale of the neighborhood.

I guess this thread is digressing from the OP's request for information. Maybe somebody has some additional advice for the OP?


"This recent addition to Deerfield's housing stock has been nicknamed the pie house because it is shaped like a wedge of pie. Although it's hard to tell from the photo, the east side of the house measures 3 feet at the start.

Amazingly the builders are asking $325,000 for this house!

Deerfield has recently put restrictions on how big a home can be but they forgot to put restrictions on how small a home can be."

Why does the house look only a few feet wide on this side?

[Careless]

Originally Posted by thePR

Why does the house look only a few feet wide on this side?

From what you quoted: "Although it's hard to tell from the photo, the east side of the house measures 3 feet at the start."

[Calidreemer]

Because it is only a few feet wide at one end, like the narrow portion of a slice of pie - hence the nick name "Pie House".

We went through it when the builder had an open house and it is just a piece of crap. The wedge shape makes living spaces difficult to work with for furniture placement and certainly the limited space would make an uncomfortable living situation IMO. It should never have been built and is merely a spectacle. I can't tell you how upset people in our neighborhood were to see that thing go up. When the foundation was poured I thought maybe the people who are now just South of the pie house were putting in a pool. I had no idea that the piece of land was considered a lot - I thought it belonged to the people South of the pie.

Anyway - one of the worst examples of new construction I can think of.

[Calidreemer]

Hi Jay - these photos are for you.

[cohdane]

Thanks for the background on the pie house. I can attest it has had a definite effect on the surrounding housing market.

We're in the middle of a home search that includes Deerfield. Initially, all the surrounding areas seemed pretty equal, other than pluses and minuses on amenities and price.

However, the more we drove around in Deerfield, the more we said, "Wow. The zoning commission out here must really be asleep at the wheel. They let people do ANYTHING."

While we haven't completely ruled out Deerfield, the lax zoning rules have been listed as a pretty big "con." The idea that I could plop my life savings down for a beautiful home and in a few years find my street turned into a collection of atrocious remuddling and outsized McMansions is very unappealing.

I know you can't control what happens on abutting lots no matter where you buy, but Deerfield seemed particularly egregious in what it let slip past. A nice community for architectural libertarians, but not for me.

To someone's point about tear-downs at least having an owner at the helm driving the aesthetics, I think that's not entirely the case. The majority of million+ homes on the market out here are new construction. Which tells me an investor/builder went ahead on spec. Which explains the mish-mash of expensive materials with el-cheapo ones and gawdy excess of "soaring entryways" and a thousand gables. (There are some, here and there, that aren't bad.)

Done with the rant. When I win the lottery, I'll chip in 1.5k to have the pie house torn down, just as a matter of principal.

[chet everett]

cohdane I did not say that the spec houses currently unsold and clogging up the market were done with an owner at the helm, my point was that once you enter the very costly world of tear downs the excuse NOT to have a skilled architect gets much harder to justify. The smarter builders that have been successful it getting places pre-sold and/or having LOTS of interest from smart buyers GENERALLY use some pretty accomplished architects AND often buyers are specifically interested in some of the more authentically detailed styles that the architects are much better equipped to "edit"...

I have seen plenty of guys that are really skilled carpenters or bricklayers or framers make the leap to "developer/builder/general contractor", draft up blueprints and TRY to make pretty houses. Too often they really don't have the aptitude to control the design. In a lot of cases these places do not attract buyers. There is a dirty little secret of such places -- when you see "builders own home" in a description this sometimes is a polite way of saying "no other person wanted the place so had to move in". Of course other times, especially when it is a builder that works well with architects, the builder treated his family to a few years in a beautiful home...