Video: Zillow's iPhone Real Estate Application

For a video demonstration of the exciting new Zillow iPhone Real Estate application, which allows users to check the prices and other data of homes and condos, as you walk by them, click here.

Watching it made me want to run out and buy my first iPhone and download the application free from the App Store.

Using GPS technology built into the iPhone, the application pinpoints where you are on a map and follows you as you move. Or, you can type in any address in another neighborhood.

Among the available data: Zestimates of 80 million homes, number of bedrooms, baths, square footage, the history of the condo's value and comparable sales of nearby homes. You can also see interior MLS photos of units on the market.

What happens when you point the phone toward a high-rise condo? Switch to List View.

Can't wait to make our content, including floor plans, available this way!

Update: My first experience with the app and a neighbor's iPhone was disappointing. Standing across the street from my 70-story high-rise, I found it difficult to locate my building on the map, and initially the AT&T connection was slow. Once I hit five bars on connection, when I moved the map, the load time was slow.

My advice: Try the application on a friend's iPhone before you race to the Apple Store. My hunch is that we're still a year or two away from realizing the fantastic potential of this app. Meanwhile, Zillow needs to continue to improve the accuracy of its data.

For a New York Times review of the Zillow app and a similar one by Trulia, available on phones other than the iPhone, click here.

Oscar at Home in Hudson's Chicago Condo

Among the most distinguished residents of any of Chicago's condos is Oscar, of Oscar Night fame.

According the Sun-Times, Jennifer Hudson, who won the Academy Award for her role in "Dreamgirls," lives in a Chicago condo, though she has been urged to move to Hollywood.

Currently co-starring in the movie version of "Sex and the City," Jennifer keeps Oscar in her condo. "My Oscar is on its own mantle," she says. "It lights up and sings when you walk through the door. It sings 'Ahhhhhhhhh.' No, seriously, it's on a lighted stand, and the light beams up at Oscar. People want to touch it and see it. Who am I to deny them?"

Jennifer credits the condo for her new, skinnier figure. "I walk up to my place on the 23rd floor. I take the steps," she says. "I can do it six times in a row. I've counted and it's 300 steps. I don't walk down because those steps are too narrow. I walk up and take the elevator down. I leap up some steps. Switch it up."

If we had an Oscar waiting, we, too, might be tempted to skip the elevator and take the stairs. On second thought . . . .

Are You Better Off Buying or Renting?

Need a really cool and sophisticated calculator to help you compare the costs of renting and buying equivalent condos?

Visit this page on the Web site of The New York Times (nytimes.com).

With any luck, the calculator can help you stretch your income as well as Jennifer Lopez (above) is stretching her lithe limb.

Adventures With Aimee in Our Nation's Capital

To promote our concept of creating exclusive, customized condo Web sites and blogs for Multiple Listing Services in other major markets, we attended the midyear conference of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in Washington, D.C., this past week.

Above, outside The White House, our sales representative, Aimee Kirkconnell, who hails from Austin, Texas, beams her trademark smile, even though she was in pain from walking miles in high heels.

You can bet all eyes monitoring the security cameras were on Aimee. As this photo shows, the only thing keeping her from The White House is an iron fence. As a native Texan, Aimee couldn't be expected to be too impressed with the home of our President. Her first response on seeing it up close: "It's so small."

Penthouse W/Indoor Pool: Reduced to $5.5M

One man's misfortune is another man's opportunity.

If you're looking--even vicariously--for a bargain penthouse with indoor pool, both the resistance and the billiards varieties--and aren't we all?--check out the current post at CribChatter.com, a blog that cleverly bills itself as: "Flips, Foreclosures, McMansions, New Condos: The Dish on the Chicago Housing Market."

It's a "foreclosure opportunity," listed at $5.5 million, having originally sold for $3.7 million, in 2002, and resold for $6 million in July 2007, eight months before it went into pre-foreclosure.

The four-bedroom, 4.5-bath loft at 400 W. Ontario in River North has 6,700 square feet. So the asking price amounts to $821 per square foot. @properties has the listing. Hurry, only one left. Based on the figures in the above post from the Wall Street Journal, this condo would go for nearly $18 million in London.

Fun: If Sam Cashed In His $6-Billion Net Worth

In a recent Sun-Times column, Jay Mariotti reported, among other, even-more-fascinating facts, that Tribune CEO Sam Zell (at right) is estimated, by Forbes, to have a net worth of $6 billion. That would make him the 52nd-wealthiest person on earth (and likely in the universe).

If that estimate is correct, Sam could have cashed it all in last year and paid cash for almost all 18,120 condos sold in the city in 2007. Their combined sales price: $6.3 billion. (Sorry, FSBOs, you are not included in that number. You'll have to find another buyer.) Interesting coincidence of numbers, at least to us condomaniacs. Sam does own at least one condo, we're told, on Michigan Avenue. How many more is anyone's guess.

Advice: Why Now Is the Perfect Time To Buy

To help get the 2008 season off to a tremendous start, we invited agents, brokers and loan originators to tell us why now is the perfect time to buy a condo in Chicago. Perhaps because they were too busy preparing for Opening Day, only three agents responded, so we'll do our best to answer for the rest.

In the tradition of David Letterman, we list our Top 10 reasons, some of them tongue-in-cheek, in reverse order. Because . . .

10. Your interest rate will be near 40-year lows. This was cited by both Francesca Rose, at Koenig & Strey, and Jeff Kerr, with @properties. They are right: Mortgage rates are hovering near their 40-year lows. Won't rates likely be lower a few months from now? Said Jeff: "We can only hope so." With 20% down, you can get a 30-year, fixed-rate mortage in Chicago for less than 5.7%.

9. You won't be buying at the top of the market. "I can say that with absolute assurance," Francesca assured us. But might not prices be even lower in the future? That, of course, is the $64,000 question. If they are, you can always buy another unit.

8. You could help Mayor Daley win his bid for the Olympics. And, if he succeeds, you could earn a bonus in 2016. The rent you receive during the games could probably pay your mortgage for a year. (If we're not mistaken, both Da Mayor and Tribune owner Sam Zell live in condos. Why shouldn't you?)

7. You have so many units to choose from. Although slightly below where it was at this time last year, active inventory of existing (re-sale) condos on the Multiple Listing Service is about 12,200. The quality (condition) of these units, says @properties' Diana Turowski, is higher this year. But the supply of new-construction units is 50% higher than a year ago. Of the 6,300 new units scheduled for completion in 2008 in the downtown area alone, 1,300 are unsold.

With highly motivated sellers, you can take your time, be more selective, be more likely to find exactly what you want, negotiate a lower price and, with new construction, get free upgrades, pre-paid assessments or taxes, even help with your mortgage. "Truly motivated sellers are more willing to accept such creative financing options as rent to own, lease-purchase and contract for deed," says Diana.

6. Your unit will appreciate dramatically when the Cubs win the World Series in October. (As a long-time Cubs fan, we didn't say which October.) And when, if global warming continues, the unit you bought west of Michigan Avenue becomes valuable lakefront property.

5. You might help keep some professional home-sellers from becoming homeless. Nationally, in good times, the median income of Realtors is less than $47,000 a year. With sales of single-family homes in Chicago down 27% last year, you don't want to see agents and loan originators living in cardboard boxes, surrounded by wrought-iron fencing, in Millennium Park, do you?

4. You can now buy a home without leaving home. With the Internet, you don’t have to go out in the cold to buy a condo. You can find one, and close on it, without ever leaving home. (Does anyone know of anyone who has actually done this?)

3. You may be able to move in immediately. If you buy an unsold unit in a new development, you won't have to experience the long wait typically endured by buyers of pre-construction.

2. You might keep someone from being fired. With 30% (100) of the condo-hotel units at the Trump International Hotel & Tower left to sell, we Chicagoans must act. You don’t want to disappoint The Donald, or risk having him fire someone, do you? (With this link to his fantastic Web site, we're doing our part.)

1. Well, just because. It's time to turn on the Big (Giant) Game to see which local developers bought ads, so you'll have to click Comments below and fill in this one yourself.

Now aren't you sorry you didn't submit your own reasons? Blame the really bad ones on the writers' strike.

Fun: Which Condos Would Candidates Choose?

To inject some fun and topicality into our on-going conversations, we invite you to post your responses to this question:

If the Presidential candidates were living in Chicago, which condo would each of them live in and why? Let's see how clever you can be. Don't be shy.

Hint: Which of those aspiring to be President do you imagine would choose The Chicago Spire? Trump International Hotel & Tower?

Instead of posting a comment here, one high-end agent e-mailed us that she thinks all the candidates would, instead, choose a high-end co-op. Why? Her reply: Security, privacy, style. Valid point. Anyone (but The Donald) disagree?

In inviting their visitors to respond to our question, our friends at YoChicago suggested a luxury loft rehab for Hillary and a Drexel Boulevard graystone for McCain. A visitor to that site thought that McCain would more likely choose an independent living, senior-citizen condo in Arizona.