Skokie: We are considering buying. Any advice? (Evanston, Des Plaines: real estate, rent)

[Krusty4v]

Hello all,

My fiancee and I are looking to buy (for the first time). I am a graduate student at UIC, and my fiancee works in Des Plaines. I dont drive to downtown, so having accessible public transport is very good. I would like to just walk to a train or bus stop.

Our real estate agent has been showing a lot of places in Skokie, most are within walking distance to Skokie Yellow Line. These areas have a lot of townhomes clustered together. Examples are on Carol St, Enfield St, Suffield St. The general price is about 200K or so. We are not looking to buy a home (with yard, garage, and all) yet, because we dont know if we would still be here after I graduate.

Are there any advise/opinion/comment on this area? We are not worry about school district because we are not planning to have kids in many years. What is most important to us is that the area is safe, because I like to walk my dog at night, (not so late, 9-ish) and a lot of the time my fiancee has to work out of the country. Any thoughts on safety in this area is welcomed. Are the people around the area friendly? I am Asian, and my fiancee is Caucasian, would we have any racial issues? From the comments on Skokie, it seems like while Skokie is diverse, it is very segregated...Am I right on this?


Thank you in advance for all the opinion/advice etc.

[chet everett]

Assuming you may move in 5 years or less (how long is your grad program going to take?) I would strongly advise AGAINST a purchase.

Have you timed the yellow line-to-UIC route? That strikes me as less than convenient.

The history of townhome is prices is even less encouraging than that for single family detached homes, I would strongly prefer that you RENT until you have more certainity in your future and can afford to purchase a single family home wherever you settle down...

[Careless]

Yeah, Yellow line to UIC is going to take more than an hour even when the purple line express is running. That's like an hour of time on the L, assuming no time waiting for transfers

[reppin_the_847]

Rather than take the super slow Yellow Line to Red Line to Blue Line combo, I'd suggest finding a way to utilize either the Union Pacific North line or the Milwaukee North line within the Metra system. Stops nearby Skokie on the Union Pacific North line include Wilmette, Evanston-Central Street, Evanston-Davis Street & Evanston-Main Street. You'll find that Wilmette's parking lot fills up quite quickly by about 7:30 AM, unfortunately. Evanston-Davis Street does have a gigantic parking garage near it by the movie theater, so perhaps that's an option. This might seem weird, but perhaps an option is to take the Yellow Line to Howard, take the stairs to switch to the northbound side, take the Purple Line to Main Street or Davis Street, and THEN switch to the Metra. This might seem like backtracking, but believe me, the Metra is much, much faster than the CTA is as far as trying to reach anything near the West Loop. I'd only do something that crazy if I was walking distance from the Yellow Line and insisted on starting my trip there rather than by car.

I'm not sure how the parking situation is at the Morton Grove stop along the Union Pacific North line, but Morton Grove is certainly nearby many parts of Skokie. This would be a great option too. Just a little food for thought.

[Careless]

Yeah, it takes 25 minutes to go from Main to the end of the line on Metra, that's more like an hour on the purple and more than an hour on red+purple/brown.

edit: I wonder how much more efficient the system would be if they had cut out the Rogers Park and Main st stations or just the Main station and put one in the middle, at Howard. (the Howard station is the last time the L and Metra North Line are within a couple of blocks of each other)

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Careless

...edit: I wonder how much more efficient the system would be if they had cut out the Rogers Park and Main st stations or just the Main station and put one in the middle, at Howard. (the Howard station is the last time the L and Metra North Line are within a couple of blocks of each other)

There is a stop at South Boulevard.

Between Leland and Roscoe the Metra and Brown Line run basically next to each other. There used to be a couple stops near Belmont and Irving Park I believe. There needs to be a stop in that span again. Presently there are no ways to connect between Metra and the Brown Line until one gets to the Ravenswood stop near Lawrence which is a couple blocks away from the Damen Brown Line stop.