Quote:
Originally Posted by Nysee53
... Now people are predicting that Evanston and Wilmette will experience a price hike and building boom, which Winnetka and Glencoe experienced in previous years.
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If those "people" are in your head then I would remember that they stop talking when you take your meds...
Evanston is FAR larger in population that ANY OTHER community that has any Lake Michigan frontage except for Chicago itself. As a percentage of homes that are NEAR the Lake it nothing like any of the other of North Shore.
No lenders are in position to finance any kind of "boom" and when you do that simple math it becomes clear that there is no way for any uptick to really move Evanston, while the much smaller size means that other towns HAVE experienced dramatic run ups:
Evanston, Illinois (IL) (pop. 74,239)
Highland Park, Illinois (IL) (pop. 31,365)
Kenilworth, IL (pop. 2,494)
Glencoe, Illinois (IL) (pop. 8,762)
Lake Bluff (pop. 6,056)
Lake Forest, Illinois (IL) (pop. 20,059)
Wilmette (pop. 27,651)
Winnetka (pop. 12,419)
If have seen the REALLY IMPRESSIVE quality of finishes / features that have gone into tremendous numbers of the newer (and sensitively redone) residences it is not hard to see where the HUGE cost per sq ft comes from. I am pretty jaded old fart, but I know what it costs to get real craftsmen to install deluxe materials and there is NO REASON to believe people are going to give this stuff away.
Highland Park is a DISTANT second in population on the North Shore, but still is CONSIDERABLY larger than many other North Shore towns and, as such, means those other towns always have MUCH less inventory. It is flat out GOOFY to say that HP is likely to come down because of gas prices -- vast numbers of the home owners there have SHORT commutes to office in Lake County or other NEARBY suburbs, those going into Chicago mostly rely on Metra, which has had pretty stable prices and a rock solid reliability, the schedule does not slow down if gas goes up!
Wilmette is buoyed by the demand for New Trier, and there is no real pressure / opportunity for any kind of "boom" when there really are people that put up with pathetically small/outdated homes to send their kids to the school...
I do not pretend that I know every detail of finance for residents of every town, but in my 20+ years of dealing with some pretty wealthy individuals I have to say that I have come across far more people that understand the consequences of borrowing vs saving from the higher net worth crowd than folks just a few notches down. Very few individuals in the areas of the traditional North Shore have home equity loans, exotic mortgages, or anything that makes them need to liquidate their assets at a loss...