I'm looking for some advice from folks currently living in Chicago.

My wife and I may be relocating to Chicago. We have been looking at prices for Soft and Hard Lofts/condo's for sale. We've found alot of what were looking for on the near northwest and west side, such as the areas off Milwaukee between 20th & about 40th west/north. Quite a few are in the Palmer Park area.

However, we are not too familiar with the various neighborhoods on the near north and west sides.

If any Chicago folks could offer some advice on affordable, safe, cool neighborhoods, I'd greatly appreciate it. Anything improving that's safe to walk a dog at 10 or 11 at night is good. Gentrification is not necessarily a dirty word to me, if it means we're making a good investment in a place where folks want to live, that's a good thing - right?

Thanks,
Geiginni

my opinion is not worth much since i moved out of chicago a little over 2 years ago. but if nobody else answers with good, credible responses, i'd say you're looking kinda far west. maybe the pricing is the issue, but the general unspoken rule was that the west/northwest, northwest, or north sides were the place to live, but usually going west of california (2600 W is it?) or sometimes even western (2400 W) meant you might be crossing that preverbial line, you *might* be. for the most part, north of division, south of foster, and east of western, for the most part, that's all great stuff. right on the lake is really pricey, except if you're looking up near uptown where it's more affordable and a little more shady.

i'd say, unless a lot has changed in 2 years, you should check out stuff in lincoln square. specifically, south of lawrence, and right near western. that was some great shit a couple years ago. single family homes, multi-unit condos, apartments, a little bit of everything, and generally really nice. the further east you go the more expensive, and the further west the less expensive, the tradeoff being poshness. western is (or was, 2 years ago) the invisible line. safe on either side of it, but there was a distinct difference in going a few blocks east or a few blocks west.

the andersonville/uptown area might be good for you. it woulda been a few years ago anyways. dunno if it's too through the roof already.

for those in the know, how's humbolt park these days? has it migrated from hipsterville to yuppieville yet? bucktown had gotten pretty insane when i left a couple years ago. amazing what money can do to a neighborhood. the lofts in that area must be expensive, right? great fucking location, though.

again geiginni, i've been out of town for a couple years. all this might have changed since then, though i really kinda doubt it would happen that fast.

In our searching I think Humbolt Park was one of the areas we were looking at. I don't know the hipster/yuppie relationship. If we're hipster-yuppies, then it might be perfect. I think some of the other area we were looking in were Logan Square, Avondale, and Bucktown..... Everything seems to be in the $220k to 260k range (2BR, 2BA)....

i was (barely) able to buy a single family home in logan square (diversery/xpy). the other neighborhoods that i was looking into were avondale and lincoln square to an extent, but lincoln square seems to already be "established" so to speak - which may or may not be fine for you. i love that neighborhood. i'd stay away from wicker park. humboldt is very dependent on exactly where you are. some places are fine, others i wouldnt live in.

but, i'm pretty sure there are some condos for sale right next to electrical...

if you're really into the condo/loft thing, there's a cool looking place near where i live (and electrical) that are bunch of condos on the river. i think they're called riverfront condos (suprising huh) or something.

i'm waiting for them to turn the factory accross the street from me into lofts and my property value skyrocket. bring on the yuppies, i'll be laughing at the bank.

there are a bunch of lofts on diversey near me. there are lofts whereever you drive in chicago with banners for sale.

if you're willing to live a little further out, look into bungalows. the city has lots of incentives to purchase these historic homes.

http://www.chicagobungalow.org/

start looking online to see what's in your price range and that'll start to answer some questions.

http://www.bairdwarner.com/ - if you need an agent let me know, i was very happy with the guy i used. sign up for the little program that emails you properties as they go on the market.

logan square is beautiful if you can get near the monument and boulevards, i'm kind of more in the armpit of it, but in the last 6 months even it's developing more and more.

hope that helps,
nick

bucktown is right on top of wicker park, so you can get to all that tomfoolery in like a 10 minute drunken hobble. i miss that a little. it's a great sorta centralized location to other stuff, too, just east and north/northeast of there. i loved it.

logan square (lived there in the late 90's) doesn't have so much going on, and is (or at least was) predominantly a hispanic family neighborhood. family being the key much moreso than hispanic. it's pretty much just folks living in buildings. that's about it. not super-cool or nothing, except in the sense that it's a fine place to have a house, and it's not as expensive as some nearby areas because there's not as much going on, it's starting to get a little further west of the "place to be" areas, and again, it was (at least a few years ago) predominantly hispanic. i didn't feel any kinda tension because of that, just a fact of the matter that the neighborhood would cost a lot more if everybody there was white.

avondale i'm not so familiar with. i was only around there a couple times, when i dropped off a girl who used to (still does?) tend bar at the gingerman. i got no knowledge on that area, really.

humbolt was, a few years ago, pretty shady and pretty hip. that's always how it works though, in my observation. by the time everybody's hearing about how cool some new neighborhood is, it's already making the transition from cheap-ass drug-riddled neighborhood to overflowing with yuppies who've caught on to the real estate speculation promise and the "coolness" factor. the things that immediately come to mind for me when i think of humbolt park are how me and my girl used to go there to play tennis (which was hilarious) and the time we missed being in a drive-by by only a couple minutes. a young boy was caught in the crossfire and killed. folks will probably remember this, it was big news for a while. probably happened in 2000? this was on the *north* side of the park, too, which seemed to be the safer area. an ex-bandmate of mine was living south of the park with his girlfriend (anybody ever heard of the band Silverado?) and they had a lot of problems with neighbors, which culminated in their truck being stolen, and then stripped for parts in a nearby alley. they actually saw it being gutted. they called the cops, and if i remember right, they were scared shitless after that because the bad guys knew that they had called. that's how i picture humbolt. this was over two years ago. it would not surprise me at all if humbolt park today is the same as bucktown was 7 years ago or so. and in 7 years, for humbolt park to be very overrun with yuppie couples raising their little white kids and playing in that vast resource of a park that could never be left to a crime-riddled neighborhood etc etc.

i cannot *at all* speak to the current state of the H.P. neighborhood. but i would speculate that if you don't mind living in a very fringe neighborhood, you could make a bank buying a place there and living in it for 10 years. don't take my word on that, but that's my word. maybe others would confirm, and definitely anybody living in chicago today could give you a better picture of the exact state of that neighborhood. i expect it is still very dynamic and on the move.

Thanks....

We're really set on the loft thing. I own a bungalow style home from the mid-20's here in Madison. Though it has plenty of charm, I really don't like maintianing an old home. It is also not a practical floor plan for modern living. I'm really want a wide open common space - living,dining, kitchen, entertainmment in one large room.

My wife and I realized that once we decided we weren't having kids, ever, that our weekends could be much more fufilling if it weren't for the damn house - mowing, raking, painting, weeding, fixing every damn little thing; paranoid about resale value with every little detail and feeling guilty about anything we put off. Screw that.....

wow, so logan square is really taking off now, huh? makes sense. chicago's progress is really a pretty easy read if you're there for more than a couple years, huh? is western/california still kinda the fringe/buffer area? or has "the system" started to push even further west?

hey g, you should check out the loft space i used to live in and see if it's available and affordable. the neighborhood is pretty sweet (although swedes and lesbians abound!) and the space is beauty. last i know of it, it's a nice little recording studio setup, smalltime, complete with a room-within-a-room/floating floor live room. the address is 5219 north clark. it's upstairs from a little knick-nack shop. both the second and third floors were set up this way, recording studios with living and studio space, they were totally separate entities from each other though, other than being owned by the same guy. but if you could buy either of those, that would rock some. both of the tenants i knew are since gone, and i have no idea what's become of those little gems spaces.

I'd look into the former Jane Byrne suite at Cabrini Green: Choice location near downtown, excellent security.

But seriously: During my tenure in Chicago, the most reasonable locations seemed to spill off the Ravenswood line (since renamed, I kid you not, "The Brown Line"). Just beyond Western Avenue there are a bunch of cool neighborhoods [Rockwell, Francisco; Kimball] that are ethnically diverse, well-served by the El, and near enough to the Loop for any sane person. On the complexion of real estate options I cannot comment, but as a renter I remember the area fondly.

I'd look into the former Jane Byrne suite at Cabrini Green: Choice location near downtown, excellent security.

It would take a real chicago native to remember this little gem in our history! On that note, pick a neighborhood with good snow removal.

Cheers,
Allen

Agreed about Logan Square, Lincoln Square and Andersonville.

The further North you go in Bucktown, the less the price, or so it seems.

I'll plug the Eastern half of Ukranian Village (South of Wicker Park). Prices still surprisingly affordable, neighborhood turnover in equilibrium.
Parking is starting to get a touch thick, but most residential streets are stickered parking.

I'd plug against most of Humbolt, with the exception of the Northern edge that buts up against Logan Square. Humbolt still really can be block-to-block sketchy, there are very nice pieces and very not nice chunks - easily discernable upon drive-through.

Further North, I'd also plug Edgewater & Andersonville. East of Broadway and South of, say, Bryn Mawr or Hollywood it can get sketchy.

But West of Broadway/Devon there are some incredibly normal neighborhoods with decent schools etc (irrelevant in this case, but still a metric).

Avoid a 1 mile radius of Broadway and Lawrence, especially to the NE, SE, and SW.

Andersonville is thoroughly yuppie, but not as insane as Lincoln Park. If you could give a shit about the yuppie phenomenon and take people as people, there are good bars, and shops and etc. The closer you are to Broadway, the closer you are to the Purple line, and LSD which can zip you down into the other neat parts of the city in about 20 minutes.

Can you tell where my ladyfriend lives?