McHenry County Blog

I found the following information on the Chicago Tribune’s Real Estate page on the internet.

It has an interative map of McHenry County (and all other parts of the six-county Chicago metropolitan area) that tells what has happened to real estate values in municipalies with enough sales from which to pull statistics.

In McHenry County, I was surprised that homes in my village of Lakewood (a suburb of Crystal Lake) have held their value better than anywhere else.

• Lakewood: +17.65% with current median value at $353,250. (Our home is a bit below average.)
• Crystal Lake: -32.98% with median value at $157,500
• Huntley: -39.59%, median at $193,000
• Lake in the Hill: -34.08%, median at $147,000
• Algonquin: -25%, median at $147,000
• Cary: -39.77%, median at $156,000
• Fox River Grove: -42.609%, median at $154,750
• Oakwood Hills: -18&%, median at $164,000
• Island Lake: -30.06, median at $114,000
• Holiday Hills: -100%, but median given at $0, so obviously there is a glitch in the data
• Woodstock: -42.14$, median at $136,000
• McHenry: -31%, median $138,000
• Lakemoor: -29.37%, median $117,250
• Johnsburg: -48.38, median $175,000
• Wonder Lake: -27.13%, median $119,500
• Ringwood: -19,2%, median $201,000
• Richmond: -36.45%, median $197,000
• Spring Grove: -33.52, median $232,500
• Marengo: -42.65%, median $117,000
• Union: -1.59%, median $310,000 (something seems a bit wonky with the median average number)
• Harvard: -50.5%, median $99,000
• Hebron: -31.03%, median $130,000

Other communities have no information.

This is the third installment of my Joplin sister’s letter about the tornado that hit just north of her family’s home.

For almost two weeks a group of radio stations that one person owns (such as country, talk, lite rock) had tornado talk 24 hours a day.It was pretty addicting, listening to them and hearing the callers looking for friends and family or just information.

Then, someone else would call in to say they had seen that person, or could give someone a ride, or help them out with a place to stay, or even give a stranger a water tank.

A house standing, but severely damaged.

Several friends had most or all of their homes destroyed.

One couple had been hiding in their bedroom closet when the roof blew off of that and their bedroom. Their curio cabinet, filled with Lladros, and their china cabinet were untouched. Denny and I helped pack their breakables up and brought them to our house. I have told her she is not getting them back!

This Joplin home is definitely a teardown.

The tornado didn’t discriminate, as it also went through one area with very expensive homes (as well as others with more modest homes).

A destroyed dentist's office in Joplin.

23 dentists had their offices destroyed, including our neighbor, one of our best friends, and a member of Denny’s golfing group.Our dentist is using another dentist’s office one day a week. Then he will be renting a former Movie Gallery until he figures out whether to rebuild or not. He had just built a top of the line, gorgeous office, which was pretty much destroyed.

He was in the process of replacing a crown for me the week before the tornado hit. I have a temporary crown which I dislodged eating a gummy Dot.

I happened to see Pat (our dentist) golfing yesterday.

So I said how sorry I was about his office and, by the way, I broke my temporary crown.

I was lucky enough to get it replaced today.

That’s how it is, living in a relatively small town.

Of the twelve ladies in our Bunco group, 4 lost their homes and one more had 11 of their 18 rentals damaged.

The skeleton of St. Paul's Methodist Church.

One day at Catholic Charities, I was helping a group of college girls pack their SUV with lunches to take into neighborhoods. I asked if they had a place to stay that night, and they said their were heading home. The night before they gotten to stay at our very nice casino in a convention room.

So, I went back into the Catholic High school and offered to house volunteers.

I was thinking of a group of cute girls or boys, but instead got a middle aged man from Indiana.

He turned out to be a great guest. He helped out at two different charities and got to clear some yards and was totally worn out, but fulfilled. He said he’d like to bring his wife back in a couple of months.

More in this series over the next three days.

There is some irony that McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren made the Northwest Herald two times Thursday, January 20th.

On the front page is its story about the seemingly exculpatory letter from the FBI.

On the last page with news in the Real Estate section is information under a Woodstock heading saying that he and his wife sold their Hebron home.

You can find the details on the home sale here.

After leaving the McHenry County Jail, the young Chinese political leaders and I headed toward two Kirk Home developments south of Woodstock.

Back in the late 1990′s my friends Al and Kathy Salvi had hosted a city councilman from Moscow. We went to eat at my favorite restaurant, 1776, and afterward we visited a model home on Miller Road in Lake in the Hills.

He was entranced. Indeed, I was so impressed that I vowed never to encourage my wife to look at new home models in the area. The inside was spectacular. Of course, there were no trees, a big thing with me.

We went into the town home development that can be seen from Route 47 first.

What you see there now is pretty much what we saw then.

First we went into the reception unit.  I told the sales people who was visiting and they were pretty impressed.

Then, it was off to the model town homes.

There was an unlandscaped drainage pond that could be seen out the bedroom window.

The group seemed quite interested in the view outside the second floor bedroom.

But there were woman interested, too.

Next it was a man and a woman.

The next room was a study.

The study attracted men only.

I would not be surprised to find interior decoration ideas from these Kirk homes are now found in China.

Relaxing at a dining room table made the agenda.

The living room was up for examination next.

You can see there was widespread interest.

Another model, another study. This one attracted both a man and a woman.

These nautical decorations caught the attention of Li Hui.

I got a feeling if the delegation leader could have taken home these anchors she would have.

Next the group headed outside.

More tomorrow.