Welcome to the June edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!
In this episode Carrie talks about the most appreciated (and most depreciated) neighborhoods in Chicago over the past year. I provide a marketing tip on how brokers can use Trello to create virtual whiteboards to track their prospects, contacts, and transactions!
Carrie can be reached at carrie@atproperties.com or by phone at 312.961.4612.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:16
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host to the show and today is another episode on the Monday market minute with my co host Carrie McCormack. So welcome, Carrie.
Carrie McCormick 0:34
Good morning. Hello, everybody.
D.J. Paris 0:36
And if you are, this is your first time listening to a Monday market minute Carrie comes on and talks about the state of affairs with the Chicago real estate market. And basically information brokers also buyers and sellers may want to know about what’s going on today. Carrie is a top producer at properties. She’s been a top producer for a very, very long time. She’s actually last I checked in the I think you’re the top 15 producers in the entire Chicagoland area for the year, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment considering there’s over 40,000 realtors. So anyway, Carrie has been doing this 19 years. Correct?
Carrie McCormick 1:14
You got it? It seems it seems hard to say that number. But yes, I’ve been doing it for 19 years.
D.J. Paris 1:20
Amazing. Well, what’s going on? What are you want to talk about this week?
Carrie McCormick 1:23
So I thought we would do something a little different. You know, it’s we’re headed into our mid year. And I always like to look back at some of the neighborhoods that have performed well here in Chicago, and I thought I would talk about the five neighborhoods with the highest home appreciation. And I’m sure there’s some that you can guess which you know, and then there’s some little surprises in here. But the number one neighborhood that had the highest appreciation is Lincoln Park. So they almost saw a 10% appreciation in their home values from last year.
D.J. Paris 2:00
That’s that’s really surprising to me, because Lincoln Park has been just so steady for so long.
Carrie McCormick 2:05
So they really lead the pack in the last year. The next one, which was not much of a surprise. But of course we’ve got the West Loop. We’ve seen an explosion over there. I mean, there’s cranes galore happening. And the West Loop is almost hitting a 10% increase as well. The number three is Humboldt Park. So we’ve seen a lot of our buyers. Look for more affordable housing, you know, looking to branch out into these wonderful neighborhoods, Humboldt Park has a ton of great things to offer. So Humboldt Park saw an increase in their home values about 7%. The next neighborhood is Roscoe village, one of my favorite neighborhoods. Yeah, so I’ve lived in Roscoe for 13 years. And it has made a big leap. And it’s, you know, just a fabulous neighborhood. The schools there are tremendous. So we see a lot of growth there because of the schools and the wonderful tree lined streets. So Roscoe village, again, was about 6.75% increase in the last year. And to round out my top five, another one of my favorite neighborhoods, which is Lakeshore east. A lot of people don’t know the neighborhood there. But it’s a little oasis, right by the lake, they offer wonderful amenities a park in their walk to everything, just some really great housing opportunities there. And they saw about a 5% increase in the last year. And it’s
D.J. Paris 3:33
and it’s really quiet over there too far as close as close as really it is sort of its own thing. And it’s only really a couple blocks from everything else. So it’s kind of this way. Yeah, it’s
Carrie McCormick 3:45
a little hidden gem.
D.J. Paris 3:47
It is it is and there’s a lot of cool high rises, right of the Aqua is over there and Harbor Point tower and all that stuff. Okay, so if we were to go the other way, are there any neighborhoods that have had, you know, a really significant decline in the last year?
Carrie McCormick 4:01
Good question. So this was a shocker to me. And it’s the Gold Coast. Really? Yes. So the Gold Coast was probably one of the biggest price drops in Chicago and they came in 9.84%. lower than last year.
D.J. Paris 4:21
Mm hmm. In any any idea of why that might be.
Carrie McCormick 4:24
You know, I looked at some of the data and I really haven’t figured out why I don’t know if people are just moving out or if there’s not much inventory over there for people to choose from. I don’t know it just we just saw a big decline in the Gold Coast.
D.J. Paris 4:39
Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, I think to like the Gold Coast, a lot of times people park themselves there and then live the rest of their lives there. So maybe it’s an inventory thing like yours. Yeah,
Carrie McCormick 4:50
it could be it could be so you know, looking at all the neighborhoods and doing some of this research. It’s always interesting because and I’ve said this before that Chicago is now Not just one market, there’s, you know, several, there’s almost I think 80 different neighborhoods here. And they’re not all created equal. You know, they offer different pros and cons as well as unique levels of competition and supply and pricing. So, you know, all the neighborhoods are just very different. And if you’re not looking to spend an arm and a leg on a property, you’ll probably want to avoid the city’s most expensive neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, you know, the near Northside, Lakeview Lincoln Park, as we talked about, they came in as an average price of 1.175. For an average price in Lincoln Park, which is pretty high. Yeah. And go ahead,
D.J. Paris 5:47
would you say, is there a certain neighborhood? I didn’t mean to interrupt you, so feel free to finish that. But is there a certain neighborhood you feel is kind of like maybe Linkin Park? Isn’t the deal deal of the century right now? Are there other like, Is it gold coast? Because it’s down? Or are there other? Is there a neighborhood that you think is really like the deal right now going on?
Carrie McCormick 6:06
You know, I do. So there’s a neighborhood called North Park and I say that’s like the deal of the year. So to me, it’s a true steal, when you look at North Park, homes average about 67 days on the market, and which is lower than the city’s average, but you know, 67 days, and there’s the homes they’re selling at 30% below list price. And I know so it appears that there’s plenty of inventory in that market, including single family homes and condos and townhomes. So right now, if you’re looking for the deal of the century, I would look in North Park.
D.J. Paris 6:41
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. That is good to know. And it’s, you know, that’s sort of like so North Park is kind of like Cicero divan, sort of like that, right? It’s kind of over over there. And it’s an area that probably is off the radar for some people. But boy, I’d like to buy something 30% off as far as I know.
Carrie McCormick 7:03
So it’s, like I said, it’s the deal of the century, well, hopefully will spur some, some market activity over there and raise some prices.
D.J. Paris 7:10
Awesome. Well, I would like to move into my marketing minute, although it’ll take a few minutes to talk about this. But I, I did want to give everyone out there all the 1000s of listeners were so grateful to have, in addition to what Kerry mentioned about what’s going on the markets talk about marketing. So I have a tool that actually just wrote an article about this tool, because I’ve been hearing brokers use it and I use it my personal life. And I’m not a practicing broker. So I’ve heard practicing brokers are now starting to use this tool, which is kind of interesting, because it isn’t specifically a real estate tool. So here’s what it what the tool well, first, I’ll give you the tools name, it’s called Trello, tr, e LL. O. And I’m going to try to explain what it does and why brokers seem to be interested in and and also how I use it, we actually use it for this podcast, what it is, is a project management app. And it has, you know, you can go to trello.com, there’s a app you can download for your phone. And what it really is, the easiest way to explain it is imagine as a broker, you have a giant whiteboard, and I’m actually going to talk about two different whiteboards. But we’ll just start with one for now. And this whiteboard could be your all the clients you’re currently working with, you’re going to put on this whiteboard on little sticky notes, and you’re just going to put their name, and you’re gonna create columns on this whiteboard. And it’s going to be the various stages of every deal. Maybe it’s Hey, I just met this person for the first time or I took them out on a, if it was a buyer, I took them out and show them, you know, places or an open and they just made the first offer and and you’re gonna be moving that sticky note from left to right to the different columns as they progress from, you know, through that whole transaction, right? So that way, if you had this kind of whiteboard, you could see you could wake up every day, look at the whiteboard and see, oh, here’s where every single one of my clients currently is in the stage, you know what stage they’re at for their transaction. And I personally like that, because I find oftentimes with other CRMs, which are client relationship management tools, and there are tons of them. Sometimes it’s just hard to get a visual look like are they call it like a 10,000 foot view of what’s going on? Right? So Trello allows you to do that it creates these virtual whiteboards. And then you create columns. And you can just drag people, you know, in this case, if it’s a client, you could just drag them from column to column. So you could say I wonder how many people are in attorney review right now that are in my pipeline that I’m working with? Well, there it is. There’s the attorney review column, you have to create it, but it only takes a moment. Okay, so I think you guys generally get the idea. You can drag and drop people from status to status until they’re all the way at the end. And then you can do other things with them. And you could create another whiteboard, even for your prospects. So you meet somebody at a party and you think I should, okay, what do I do after I meet somebody? Well, maybe I write them a thank you note or it’s nice to meet you email or something. So you create that status and then you just drag them in there after you You do that. And then it’s, oh, it’s been, you know, then I do a one month thing or a three month thing or whatever. So you get the idea. You can create these whiteboards. And then it just gives you a chance to visually see everything. Because oftentimes for a lot of the software for to dues or managing prospects and clients, it’s not that visual. And it’s hard to see, like, I wonder how many people are currently in my pipeline? Well, you can make a column, you know, for that, and then just drag people in and then drag them out. And it’s so easy because it’s this drag and drop system. And it’s free to that’s the best part. I mean, you can pay for additional features of Trello, you probably won’t have to I know I don’t, by the way, we use this for booking guests on the show. So we had somebody who was recommended to us to interview last week, but a few weeks ago, they somebody had recommended written in so we drag them into this recommended by listener column, then we reach out to them. And then when they say, Yeah, I want to be on the show, we drag them into the Hey, they’re interested. And then we when we scheduled it, we drag him into the scheduled and then so and so. So we just pushed all the way from left to right. And it’s so easy and customizable. So anyway, I just wanted to explain that in a little bit more detail, so people could get a sense of what I’m talking about visually. But anyway, so that is my marketing tool carry. I don’t know, I’m sure you have systems in place and tools in place. I just have found there’s not very many that you can visually see everything at once.
Carrie McCormick 11:21
No, I love this idea. Actually, I haven’t used it yet. But I’m definitely going to take a look at it. And I like the concept.
D.J. Paris 11:29
Yeah, check it out. It was actually developed. It really for for IT professionals because I used to work at it firm. And this is what IT professionals do. Or if you guys have seen the the TV show Silicon Valley, they always show this is that they show this giant whiteboard and all these sticky notes for when there’s different tasks to build software, and then they just move people you know, they move the sticky note from column to column. It’s the same idea. So anyway, I’ve heard brokers talk about I thought you guys would find interesting. Okay, we’ll wrap this up. Carrie, thank you so much for being on the show. Um, two things. If anyone is ever interested in working with Carrie, obviously she works with buyers, sellers, investors, writers, etc. What’s the best way they should reach out to you?
Carrie McCormick 12:11
Of course, I always say call me three one to 9614612 you can always email me as well. It’s Kerry ca RR ie at@properties.com.
D.J. Paris 12:23
Yeah. And you know, if you are somebody who’s looking for representation, I mean, I know if it was me, I would want somebody who’s the top 15 of all the brokers in Chicago, that would be a good thing. So certainly carry reach out to her and then also as brokers, our listeners who are brokers reach out to us with questions for Kerry. And even for me as well send it through our website, which is keeping it real pod.com our Facebook page which is also keeping it real pod and just shoot us anything and we’ll we’ll cover it on the next episode. So thank you, Carrie, we’ll let you get back to your busy day and we’ll talk next month.
Carrie McCormick 12:58
You got it. Have a great week.
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