While we’re on the topic of potential disappearing acts, as per the living room story above, let’s look into disappearing amenities, like a doorman, for example, or even tennis courts.
Then we’ll touch briefly on thoughts about hellish conversions and industry semantics.
Check the big print, too:
Prospective home buyers, especially first-timers, are often advised by parents, friends, neighbors, hairdressers and practically anyone who’s ever signed a contract to read the fine print on the document that seals their intent to buy a home.
I’d also check the more obvious print detailing the building’s and residence’s amenities, a list of goodies that sometimes appears in an elaborate brochure or perhaps on the reverse of the floor plans. Amenities, incidentally, is defined in John Reilly’s book, “The Ultimate Language of Real Estate,” as: “Features, both tangible and intangible, that enhance and add to the value or desirability of real estate. In a condominium, for example, common amenities include a swimming pool, clubhouse and a good view.”
In the 18 months or so that I’ve been reviewing new residential housing for this column, I’ve found some some disturbing instances of home buyers taking these amenities for granted, expecting them to appear as promised; but I’ve been more than disturbed when I find that some of those printed amenities aren’t going to materialize.
Accompanying each House Hunter column is a graphic that lists facts relating to the building or community. The data are compiled from printed materials, floor plans, lists of standard and optional amenities, as well as my tour of the models and the interview with a sales agent.
Prior to publication I check the information and have made corrections and updates relating to prices, number of units in a building, addresses–all fairly routine.
And some not so routine.
Recently, in researching/reviewing Renaissance Place, a conversion on the city’s South Side, I had a full-time doorman disappear. Apparently, the builder had decided that the yet-to-be-formed condo owners association would determine whether to have a doorman, so I deleted it from the graphic. However, much to the surprise of a prospective home buyer I’d talked with at the site and who later signed a contract, that planned-for doorman amenity had been eliminated earlier–but he had not been informed before signing because of a miscommunication with the sale’s agent.
I’ve also had marketers try to push “concierge” as an amenity because it sounds, well, snootier than doorman. If a building is so upscale that it has both concierge and doorman, great. But, they’re not the same. A concierge handles personal things, orders your limo and Goodman Theatre tickets, sees that your exotic plants and birds are cared for while you’re in Bali or finds a hotel room for your friends when the convening radiologists have booked all the best places.
My favorite disappearance, though, happened at an apartment-to-condo conversion at The Metropolitan, 5320 N. Sheridan Rd. on Chicago’s North Side.
During a tour, the sales agent showed me the indoor pool, the outdoor sundeck and the tennis courts–all amenities. During my pre-publication checking, I was told there were no tennis courts on the amenities list. What? I’d just seen them, a few days before. Where did they go? Management said that the space might be used, instead, for town houses.
Really? Did the new buyers know that? That maybe town homes might be going up some day right next to their deck and pool?
Those tennis courts didn’t appear on my amenities list.
If buyers choose a residence for its own virtues as well as some specific extras such as receiving room or doorman, hardwood floors and marble vanities, be advised: Double check those amenities as closely as you scrutinize the headache-inducing contract.
Condo conversions:
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Following a recent conversion column, a reader (identified, but nameless for now) e-mailed suggesting a story on “the other side of a condominium conversion….” She said both renters (who remain with leases) and the initial new buyer move-ins “live through construction dirt and noise seven days a week…. There is a serious lack of security…. The developers … usually do the construction work as though it is a vacant building.” She cited one incident where workers sanded hallway ceilings without first taping doors to apartments. “I came home to find every piece of furniture, every counter, even every piece of paper in my living room, dining room and kitchen covered in thick, white paint dust.”
Readers who want to relay a condo conversion story, hellish or otherwise, may e-mail or real mail as per info below. You may request anonymity, but please identify yourself. No phone calls, please.
Phone first:
(No, no. Not me. Read on.)
You see an ad that says “Grand Opening!!!” or “Come visit our furnished MODELS!!!”
Don’t make the trip until you check it out. Grand Opening might seem to be the announcement of the actual opening of a building or models, but that term often refers to the opening of a sales office where residences are offered at preconstruction prices.
“Visit our models” often means, “wait a few days or a few weeks because the furniture’s not in yet or the decorator went on vacation” or maybe even, “Oops. The site got flooded and we haven’t started the house and we forgot to kill the ad.”
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e-mail: [email protected]
mail: Genevieve Buck, Business, baiduhai, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Il. 60611