136 W. Carroll St. in Macomb -- now only $100,000

136 W. Carroll St. in Macomb (formerly First Baptist Church) just had a massive price reduction this morning -- it's now only $100,000 (down from $200,000).

Macomb has a lot of historic buildings, but few are as well preserved as this one. Check out the video tour below for a look inside this beautiful space.

Georgetown Homeowners' Association has new website

Georgetown, a community of 204 townhomes located just west of Macomb, has a new website:

http://georgetownmacomb.org

The site has a lot of great information, including a copy of the covenants and by-laws you can download. There's also a special section for new residents with all the important nuts-and-bolts stuff you have to learn whenever you move to a new neighborhood: what company to call for cable TV, where to vote, when garbage gets collected, etc.

As far as I know, there aren't many websites like this for the different homeowners' associations in our area. If you live in one of those neighborhoods and your association has a website I've overlooked, drop me a line and I'll be happy to help get the word out. Thanks.

Video tour of 818 S. Johnson St., Macomb, IL

Just released -- my newest video tour:



This house, located at 818 S. Johnson St. in Macomb, has two bedrooms, one bathroom, a full basement, and two garages -- with enough space for three vehicles.

Video tour of 60 Richmond Road, Macomb, IL

I recently learned how to shoot and edit videos tours of listings. Here's my latest effort:



Though still very much a novice, I'm hoping this is one more tool I can use to help sellers.

Full-time real estate agents

In my last post, I mentioned some pretty funny real estate videos I saw at a recent RE/MAX conference.

I may need to track down the director of those videos and buy him a drink. Because here’s another one of his savvy creations that I just discovered:



Did I mention that we have four agents in our office – and that all of us practice real estate full time? No? Hmm. Maybe next post.

RE/MAX at the movies

I spent the first couple days of this week out in Denver, attending the 2010 RE/MAX Broker Owner Conference. (My dad is the owner of our office, but because he was tied up doing deals, he allowed me to fill in for him and make the trip.)

As you might expect, a lot of the conference focused on rah-rah stuff: why RE/MAX is a powerful brand name, how its agents tend to sell quite a few more houses than agents affiliated with other franchises, etc. It was good to hear that, but I consider myself a pretty tough audience. Though no Debbie Downer, I have little stomach for saccharine-flavored messages that consist only of hype.

So I was encouraged when the RE/MAX corporate staff showed us a couple videos that had some wit, humor, and -- best of all -- a point. The first one was about how some non-RE/MAX franchises set up their agents in a pyramid structure:



Not bad, eh? Not quite up there with the legendary Alec Baldwin scene in Glengarry Glen Ross (the grand champion of movies about real estate, in the opinion of this modest Realtor talking in the third person), but definitely better than I was expecting.

The other video they showed us was about how consumers see the RE/MAX name everywhere these days:



After this second video ended, they brought the director up on stage. Turns out he's a real estate agent who's always loved filmmaking, so he just shot what he knows. I think that's why these videos work.

New Little Swan Lake page on our website

If you're interested in Little Swan Lake -- a 250-acre lake located five miles west of Avon, Illinois -- you'll definitely want to check out this brand-new page of our office website, macombland.com:

http://www.remax-unified-macomb-il.com/display.php?cat=12

The page, which we launched yesterday, includes

* All of our current Little Swan Lake listings.

* A basic description of the lake and what it offers.

* A Little Swan Lake map, linked up to Google Maps.

* A downloadable PDF with current Little Swan Lake rules and regulations.

* A link to littleswanlake.net, which features news, community activities, photos, and the history of Little Swan Lake.

We're pretty excited about the page and hope visitors find the information useful. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any feedback (positive or negative).

Homebuyer tax credit gets extended, expanded

As you might have heard, the federal government recently extended and expanded the homebuyer tax credit it's been offering.

A first-time buyer can get a tax credit worth $8,000 or 10% of the home's purchase price -- whichever is less. The government defines a "first-time buyer" as anyone who hasn't owned a home in the last three years.

A repeat buyer can get a tax credit worth $6,500 or 10% of the home's purchase price -- whichever is less. The buyer must have owned a home for at least five consecutive years out of the last eight years. And the purchased home must be a new primary residence, not a vacation home or rental property.

Here's a great, concise overview of all this, straight from the IRS itself:




If you'd like something animated and a bit more entertaining, you'll want to check out this:



Created by Washington state's association of Realtors (that's why you see their website listed at the end), it features characters who sound like they could be relatives of Ned Flanders. But gosh-a-rooney -- the whole thing's pretty darn clever.

Home show at WIU on March 15th

WIU's Western Hall is hosting the WJEQ Home and Lifestyle Show this Saturday, March 15th. Like the Ag Mech Show, held in the same building last month, the event features dozens of exhibitors. A complete list of them can be found here.

The Home and Lifestyle Show usually runs all weekend. This year, however, it will be held only on Saturday -- from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (I'm not sure if the one-day approach will be a permanent change for the show or just occur this year.)

Our RE/MAX office will be there, as always, and we'll have free magnets, pens, flower seeds, and other giveaways. And we'll be holding a drawing for a free microwave. Who doesn't need one of those?

Farm show at WIU on Feb. 9th and 10th

Macomb's Western Hall will host the 38th annual Farm Expo and Ag Mech Show this weekend, February 9 and 10. The show runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday.

Open free to the public, the show features over 250 exhibitors -- on topics such as agricultural equipment, technology, and services -- as well as guest speakers, a craft show, and a kiddie tractor pull. If you care anything about stuff that's ag-related (or just want to grab a bunch of free pens, rulers, candy, and other giveaways), this is your event.

Our office will be there with our real estate booth, just as we are every year. Stop by and say hello. You can also register for a tool set we'll hold a drawing for at the end of the show; you don't need to be present to win.

You can read more about the show here or here.

Ethanol plant goes bust

A lot of farmers in west-central Illinois just lost a grain cart-load of money.

Hype about anticipated ethanol production has played a significant role in the run-up in farm prices in west-central Illinois over the past few years. Hoping to capitalize on this hype, many local farmers made considerable investments in a new ethanol plant outside of Canton.

But the $40 million plant just went bust.

Brenda Rothert of the Peoria Journal Star has the story:

The minimum lost by the farmers who spoke with the Journal Star was $29,000 each for investing in just one share, not including the value of the corn they delivered. Farmers who purchased more than one share lost much more, and some farmers say they might lose their farms.

"It makes us all look so stupid," said one. "I'm trying to explain to my wife and son why I did this, and it doesn't make any sense."

A group of farmers from Fulton and McDonough counties who invested in the project recently talked to the Journal Star on the condition that their names not be used.

A good idea

When they were first approached in 2001 about the plan to build a $40 million ethanol plant, the farmers said it seemed to be a good idea.

"The community's been good to us," said one. "It would create some jobs."

They had to invest the money by March 2002, and projections from project planners called for the plant to be making alcohol by July 2003. Farmers had to commit $5,000 per share, plus pledge in writing to deliver 5,000 bushels of corn annually for five years.

One farmer said he supported the idea but was unsure about whether he could afford it.

"I really didn't have the $5,000 to put in," he said. "But I came up with it and put it in."

Since his farm lacks storage facilities for his corn, he figured it was a good decision, because he's close to the plant and would be delivering corn there.

But then board members came back to the farmers and asked them to double their investments: $10,000 and 10,000 bushels of corn annually for five years. Not all of the farmers agreed to double their investments. Those that did lost twice as much, plus the value of the corn.

"I swallowed hard," said the farmer who had struggled to invest the initial $5,000. But again, he did it.

Then board members came to the farmers again and asked them to sign letters of credit for the project. For each $5,000 share, they wanted a $24,000 letter of credit. Farmers went to their banks and signed paperwork for a $24,000 loan to the plant. The farmers would have to personally repay the loans if the company called them in.

"They kept saying that the creditors wanted to make sure we as investors delivered the corn," one farmer said.

"There was pressure put on," another said.

"I didn't want to be the one guy who messed things up," a third farmer said. "Almost all of us signed this thing."

The farmers' troubles may continue. Many fear that they'll be forced to honor their contracts and deliver corn to the ethanol plant for several more years.

New housing underway for WIU students

There's been a lot of dirt getting pushed around lately at the corner of South Ward and West Grant streets in Macomb. A company called O.C. Communities is creating a new complex of WIU student housing with 100 homes, each with two, three or four bedrooms. If all goes as planned, the new units should be fully constructed and ready to rent by the start of the fall 2008 semester.

As of Tuesday, January 22, the scene at South Ward and West Grant looked like this:


What will the finished units look like? The company recently set up a model home in a lot over at the 500-block of West Jackson Street:


The Macomb Eagle's Laura Black reports that a major component of the new housing complex will be its community feel. Students will have access to an on-site computer lab and exercise facility; there will even be advisers available to help with things like resume writing.

United Campus Housing, the company planning to handle the day-to-day management of the complex, has already launched a new website with floor plans and other information. No word yet on how many students have already signed leases for next school year.

More about the new radon law

Time to continue the discussion about radon from my last post.

Shortly before Christmas, I wrote about the new radon-related law set to take effect January 1, 2008. I lamented how I hadn't found a single article in the mainstream press about the law -- just a brief mention on one agent's blog.

But I should have dug deeper. Mere hours after my post went live, I got a message from Mr. Calvin Murphy of Allied Radon Services in Mt. Vernon, down in southern Illinois. He directed me to his blog, which has an impressive chronicle of how the new radon requirements went from bill to law as they wound through the state legislature last year, before finally being signed by the governor. Murphy's detail is more thorough than the stuff you find on most Congressional members' websites. Through Murphy's postings, I learned that the bill made it through both chambers of the statehouse without a single "nay" vote. That's the sort of bipartisanship you don't see much in Springfield, especially the way Illinois state politics have been this past year.

So the legislature obviously made itself clear regarding radon. What does the real estate community need to do? There are a couple things, required of anyone who sells "residential real property" (a housing structure with one to four units):

1.) A seller must give a buyer a special pamphlet/fact sheet called "Radon Testing Guidelines for Real Estate Transactions," published by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. This pamphlet/fact sheet explains how to test for radon and notes that the IEMA "strongly recommends ALL homebuyers have an indoor radon test performed prior to purchase or taking occupancy" of a property.

2.) A seller also must fill out a special radon disclosure form, indicating whether the property ever has been tested for radon. (This disclosure form looks a lot like the lead paint disclosure, a form that's already been in use in real estate for a number of years.)

I should probably pause here if (like I did, until I took a helpful continuing ed course a couple years ago) you need a quick chemistry lesson on radon.

Practically all soil on the planet has at least trace amounts of the element uranium, and when this decays, it gives off gas in the form of radon. Normally this isn't a problem, because the radon gas disperses into the atmosphere, where it's greatly outnumbered by other, benign elements. But when you put a manmade structure -- say, a house or office building -- over a spot with high radon levels, the gas no longer has a direct route to the atmosphere. The radon now has to travel through the building first, and depending on how well or poorly insulated this structure is, that could take a while. The longer the radon gas stays in the building, the more the humans who breathe that air are at risk.

The risks are real. The gas is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. (Smoking, of course, is still #1.) Researchers think radon probably kills, or helps kill, about 21,000 Americans a year.

You might reasonably conclude that if we know where the uranium is in the first place, we can expect to sleuth out that the radon should be in that same area, too. And that's true, to a certain extent. Researchers have developed extensive radon "maps," taking into account soil types, geology, and other factors. As this map shows, Illinois has a range of radon levels, with high levels throughout central and northern Illinois, average levels in Chicagoland and much of southern Illinois, and low levels at the southernmost tip of the state.

But of course these are simply averages. In McDonough County (where our RE/MAX office is located), 41% of the homes that were tested had high radon levels, according to a pamphlet I picked up at the local health department. Meanwhile, the town of Chillicothe (north of Peoria) is alleged to have high radon levels in nearly 100% of its homes. And then there stories any inspector will tell you about how he's seen a house on one side of the street test high for radon and a house across the street test low. There's that much variation.

At our monthly Lamoine Valley Board of Realtors meeting in December, we had two guest speakers: Randy Stufflebeem, owner and operator of B-Sure Home Inspection and Environmental, and Jere Paradis, owner and licensed radon mitigator for Midwest Radon Reduction. Stufflebeem talked about how to test for radon; Paradis focused on how to solve a radon problem once you've identified it. (Because it's an obvious conflict of interest for the same person to perform the test and mitigation on the same property, dividing up the tasks ensures a check-and-balance system that protects consumers from dishonest radon experts.)

Stufflebeem said that when he tests for radon, he places an electronic monitoring device in the lowest livable space in the house. (Crawl spaces don't count, but a basement with the potential to be finished does.) This device remains in place for a period of time, usually at least 48 hours, and monitors the radon level over an hour-to-hour period. Some individual hours might see a spike in the radon level, but the inspector cares most about the 48-hour average. If that average is higher than the magic number of 4.0 picoCuries/liter, the inspector must recommend that the problem be treated. (Apparently, this 4.0 pCi/L has been documented by health researchers as the threshold level for a human's risk to radon gas.)

Fixing a radon problem is pretty simple, said Paradis. The homeowner simply installs a ventilation system (I think of it like a bathroom vent for your whole house) that sucks the air from the lower level and disperses it outside. The cost for a system like this in west-central Illinois is usually around $1,000, said Paradis. That covers the equipment and installation.

Stufflebeem and Paradis also noted something I found surprising: Radon can be found in water and rocks, too -- not just soil. Granite countertops can be sources of radon. Paradis even told a story about a school in his home state of Massachusetts that had radon pouring out of granite walls located inside the building.

Failing to address a radon problem -- or failing to know you have a problem in the first place -- doesn't mean you'll immediately drop dead of lung cancer. Like most health-related dangers, mere exposure to this one doesn't guarantee you'll get sick at all. But it does increase your risk. As the state government has tried to make clear with this new radon law, Illinois residents who ignore that risk may be gambling with their lives.

New radon law starts Jan. 1

Radon is about to be a much bigger deal in the world of real estate in Illinois.

Starting January 1, anyone who sells "residential real property" (defined as a housing structure with one to four units) in Illinois must give a prospective buyer two radon-related documents: (1) a disclosure form, in which the seller explains whether he/she is aware of high radon levels in the home and (2) a pamphlet that explains how to test for radon.

That's pretty important stuff -- certainly the most serious new policy I've seen at the statewide level since I became a real estate agent in 2004. Strangely, though, I've found no mention of it in the mainstream press. There was a press release sent out to agents last month by the Illinois Association of Realtors, and I spotted some information about it on a blog of a real estate agent in the Chicagoland area. But that's about it. Even the Google News archive, generally excellent at sniffing out a story, fails to turn up anything. Of course, when even Google can't find a story, you're probably correct in assuming nobody has written one.

So I'll try to fill in the gaps.

Tomorrow our local board of real estate agents, the Lamoine Valley Board of Realtors, is holding its monthly meeting, and the guest speakers will be talking exclusively about radon. I'll report back with what I learn.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a link to an excellent slideshow (http://www.radalink.com/illinois/presentation.htm) that gives an overview of the new radon law. Created by a company that specializes in radon testing, the slideshow even includes audio accompaniment.

Case closed on the missing steel

In an earlier post, I wrote about the construction of a new Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Macomb -- and how the project had been in hiatus because of some missing steel.

That steel obviously must have arrived, because this was the scene at the work site yesterday:


From what I've been told, the construction crews involved with these restaurants can put up new buildings pretty quickly. No word yet on the expected completion date, but my guess is that Macomb may be eating wings before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Vandalism in Macomb

In one of my first posts, I remarked that certain sections of Macomb could be considered the "front lines" of zoning battles in Macomb. I was referring to the always-ongoing verbal spats (as opposed to literal brawls in the streets) between single-family residents and students/landlords regarding multi-family housing in the city. Lately, however, the tensions have taken a different form.

At around 2:25 a.m. on Sunday, October 7, a group of college students ripped down a chain-link fence in front of a house at 120 W. Adams, owned by Macomb resident Barbara Martin, who lives there with her son. The property sits in the middle of the route from the downtown bars back to campus, so it's not surprising that Martin apparently has been having problems with late-night vandalism for some time.

What the students didn't know was that Martin recently installed security cameras to monitor her grounds. A few days after the incident, the Macomb Journal published this image of the crime, caught by Martin's equipment:


The police have been trying to enhance the image, but so far only have been able to identify clothing, not faces. Despite several articles in the local papers and condemnation by both Macomb Mayor Mick Wisslead and WIU President Al Goldfarb, the crime remains unsolved.

There's a second part to the story. On October 23, members of WIU's Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity and the Macomb Police Department's Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 189 teamed up and rebuilt the fence. The Macomb Eagle, Macomb Journal, and Peoria Journal Star all covered the story.

Nevertheless, the neighborhood vandalism continues. The Macomb Journal ran a front-page story last Friday about a fence that was recently damaged at 541 N. McArthur Street.

But is vandalism actually on the rise in Macomb? Maybe not. From that same Journal article:

Macomb Police Detective Matt Gass said that since the Martin incident, the Police Department has been learning of previously unreported incidents of vandalism.

"Throughout the past few weeks we've had people say, 'Yeah we've had property damage all the time, just never reported it,'" Gass said. "The University Baptist Church has said they've pretty much had their fence destroyed, it's the same thing, that it's happened over a period of time."

One of the challenges with Macomb's town-gown geography is that the boundaries of where students are allowed to live haven't ever been truly defined. Students and local families are all mixed in together, with spotty results. If this were a different sort of college town (e.g., Champaign-Urbana) where the campus was largely separated from the rest of the community, students would vandalize properties belonging to other students (rather than the townies). In Macomb, students simply vandalize their neighbors -- who could be anyone.

The case of the missing steel

Macomb likes its new restaurants. A couple years ago, the city got its first-ever Arby's and -- according to (possibly apocryphal) lore -- set a record for greatest opening-day sales for an Arby's in North America. You don't mess with Macomb when it comes to curly fries.

So locals had a lot of similar enthusiasm when, earlier this year, Buffalo Wild Wings announced that it would build a new restaurant in the highly coveted land right in front of Wal-Mart. Construction crews showed up and began prepping the foundation. And then things just . . . stopped. For the past month or so, the site has looked like this:


The Macomb rumor mill went into overdrive, with some locals speculating that the Macomb City Council had denied the restaurant a liquor license. (Wal-Mart sued the city a few years ago when its liquor request was shot down.) But as Nathan Woodside of the Macomb Eagle reported on October 15, liquor wasn't the problem:

Kim Pierce, Macomb Area Economic Development Corporation executive director, said construction has stopped because a batch of steel needed to be back-ordered before excavation could continue.

"When I talked to them a couple weeks ago, they thought the steel was just a couple weeks away, so that basically brings up to right now," Pierce said. "Hopefully that will get delivered in over the weekend and they can start next week."

No word yet on the missing steel. The restaurant was originally scheduled to open sometime in November, but Pierce is quoted later in the article as saying that date has been pushed back until the end of the year. A hungry Macomb stands ready.

Websites about road projects

A couple weeks ago, the governor's office launched a new website to track the expansion/improvement of U.S. Route 67, which cuts through west-central Illinois, linking the Quad Cities to St. Louis.

http://www.dot.state.il.us/us67/index.html

One thing I learned is that the project will involve building a new four-lane bridge over the Illinois River at Beardstown; I'd figured that construction crews would expand the current bridge or simply whittle down traffic to two lanes for that section.

Anyway, the site gives a decent overview but is a little short on maps. Far more detailed ones can be found on the website for Illinois 336 -- the proposed four-lane linking Macomb to Peoria.

http://www.peoriatomacomb.com

A little recognition for our office

I'm not very interested in self-promotion just for its own sake. There's way too much of that in real estate already, and I think most consumers are sick of it, too. The "look at me, please!" thing gets pretty old.

So I thought quite a bit about whether to post a link to this story -- about an award our office recently won for 2006 sales. Among all of the 89 RE/MAX offices in the St. Louis Region, an area encompassing Missouri and the southern half of Illinois, our office averaged the highest number of transactions per agent: 51. (We also won the award in 2005, when we averaged 55 transactions per agent.)

While an award in itself is a nice thing to have, I think the real point of this one is that it demonstrates just how much we've been helping our clients. I look at it this way: In any industry, the busy people are the ones considered to be knowledgeable and hardworking. If your car breaks down and you need to hire a mechanic, for example, you can guess that the person who's doing it full time probably has the necessary training and has fixed the same problem dozens of times for other people.

My automotive expertise may be lacking (though I did once, as a grad assistant, have a professor give me the assignment of refilling her car's windshield wiper fluid, for which I earned high marks), but I'm happy to be part of a team that knows a lot about real estate. And at a current average of 44 transactions per agent for 2007 sales, we're keeping pretty busy this year, too.

Zoning requests that prevailed

One topic I haven't addressed much on here thus far (other than in a general overview I wrote last spring) is zoning in Macomb. That's not because I consider it irrelevant -- quite the opposite, actually -- but because there's so much occurring with it, often in apparently contradictory fashion, that keeping pace with the newest chapters of the story isn't easy. I could probably make zoning my sole topic of this site and still not prevent things from slipping through the gaps.

Last week, Macomb governing bodies made two somewhat surprising zoning decisions. I call them surprising because both involved changing (or at least bending) the zoning rules concerning multi-family housing -- and in Macomb, that almost never happens.

The first decision occurred last Monday, October 1, when the Macomb City Council agreed to change the zoning from single to multi-family for a piece of land at the corner of North Randolph Street and Hickory Grove Road. The owner of the land, the Macomb Country Club, requested the change in order to build two duplexes that would sit on the edge of the club's golf course.

The country club's request was granted by city aldermen, passing 8-1. The lone voice of dissent was from Alderman Ken Zahnle, who was quoted in a story by the Macomb Journal: "This is spot zoning, pure and simple."

Even if you disagree with Zahnle, it's easy to to understand his point. As this Macomb zoning map shows, there isn't any multi-family housing anywhere near this land; the closest multi-family units are some duplexes located on the east end of the country club, on Bayberry Lane.

The other zoning decision occurred two days later, when the Macomb Zoning Board of Appeals agreed to allow Scott Wisslead to construct twin duplexes on his property at 533 N. Randolph. From the Journal:

Developer Scott Wisslead sought a front yard setback variance of ten feet. The city code requires a setback of 25 feet, and Wisslead asked to be allowed to set it at 15 feet.

Community Development Coordinator Ed Basch said the fact that 533 is a corner lot gave Wisslead, in effect, two front yards. "For a duplex, this would be essentially an unbuildable lot if you required him to have two front entrances," he told the board.

Neighbor Cheryl Douglas, at 529 North Randolph, objected to the duplex design featuring second floor living quarters and garages on the first level. "It's going to look like a parking garage," she said. "This is a historic neighborhood. Four of these homes are in the David Badger architectural sketchbook."

Board chair Kevin Wiehardt expressed concern about a need for landscaping on the property. Board member A.J. Bourn moved to table any action until more detailed architectural drawings could be provided.

"This motion is indicative of the aesthetic concerns we all share about this design," said board member Sally Egler.

"The ranch home design provides the most useable living space," Wisslead responded.

But City Attorney Liz Wilhelm told the zoning board that action could not be postponed due to aesthetic considerations alone. Bourn then withdrew his motion, and board member Ron Runser moved to approve the variance.

The board cast a unanimous vote of approval. Basch assured board members that his office had successfully worked with Wisslead before on landscaping issues and that should not be of further concern.

(Runser, incidentally, is a new member of the zoning board. As a citizen, he appeared before the board a year or two ago on behalf of his employer, Schuyler State Bank, which requested permission to turn on an electronic sign located in front of the bank's new building on East Jackson Street. That request was granted, but only after a lot of back and forth between the bank and the zoning board.)

The zoning fights aren't over. Coming up soon is a request to build doctors' offices in a corn field along East Grant Street. The homeowners in that neighborhood have already spoken out against the project.