posted by chicago pop
Carol Mosley Braun's Kitchen, Above Right[Source: Curbed Chicago http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2010/11/24/carol-moseley-brauns-hyde-park-home-is-still-for-sale.php]
No one is going to vote for her anyway, but one look at the interior design job in her $1.7 million brownstone, and voters have every right to ask some serious questions. Like, how can you expect to ask 11% or $200 K more ($1.9 million) than you paid for it, if that's what you did to the kitchen? What's with all the jarring Christmas tree green? And what happened to the soul, amidst all the whitewashed box-rooms, of what must have at one time been a beautiful old brownstone?
It is often remarked that Hyde Park residential real estate operates in a kind of Bermuda Triangle, in which home prices seem to go in the opposite direction of prevailing trends, exempting themselves from the rules of economics that apply to most everyone else. "I'm not into 'buy high, sell low,'" Braun told Chicago Magazine.
The piece confirms a few other things about the Twilight Zone real estate market in Hyde Park that have been widely rumored for ages: 1) To be successful, you must be like a humanities PhD candidate who expects to get a job, and pretend that you are an exception. List for above what comparables in the neighborhood are going for, and pray.
Chicago Magazine's Dennis Rodkin reports that "Hyde Park’s current average sale price for single-family homes is in the 2004-2005 range." Braun bought her home in 2006. 2) Don't list unless you're willing to die in the home before lowering the price. Quoth Braun: “The market is so soft. Until it turns around, I’ll stay here."
