All Forum Posts by: Lisa Maceda

I'm looking to relocate to one of those South Berwyn homes this summer so get more for my money than I currently have in Oak Park. It will be a buy and hold though. I think someone mentioned the inspections - I heard that too. The building dept. is pretty strict about bringing everything up to code. Schools are not great there so it may factor into your decisions as well. Next time you venture down there, check out Cigars and Stripes for the best wings ever!

That house could be cute as a button! How about a slate blue gray with white trim? This image is kind of what I am trying to describe. Since it's a smaller house you can take a small risk with color. You could take an even bigger risk with the front door. Personally, I would think about taking the shutters off the little window since it's a little crowded and you could do a trellis with a climbing vine or flowers on the right of the door. If you or a friend know photoshop you could try some different combinations of colors.

I think if you can do it really well so that it looks like you had a designer and a custom cabinet maker vs. piecing together some craigslist finds, it will stay in style for a long time - or at least not be something that screams dated in a few years. Not saying you need custom cabinets but you might need so add a few details that make things look custom and cohesive. If you tie everything together with the same countertop and someone hates it, at least they could paint the island to match the cabinets. Just my opinion though! I'm an interior designer and if I had an island I would absolutely look at a different color than the rest of the cabinets.

Rachel, these are not the best photos, but here are some before and afters of the first floor. We created an open living area with a completely brand new kitchen. We also finished the attic into a bedroom and flex space (we use it as a TV room), added a half bath, completely remodeled the full bath, and added a huge walk in closet off the master in one of those skinny little awful additions every single little house in Oak Park seems to have.

Before (Living Room) - I know you all want to know where you can buy that sofa, but the owner took it with him :)

After (living room and shared dining area)

Before (dining area and doorway to an AWFUL kitchen - there was about 2' of prep space and only one run of cabinets)

After (living/dining and new galley kitchen)

Before (kitchen)

After (kitchen - doesn't show it, but there are actually two sides to it now!) it took a lot of reworking of closets and stairs, but we needed to rework the stairs anyway to gain access to the finished attic)

This was our first house/very passive investment property so the finishes are a little much for the area in Oak Park it's in. They have incredible schools though so people are willing to pay top dollar to have that zipcode. I don't think we are going to make the kind of profit a true investor would be happy with since the house was a total nightmare when we opened it up, but a lot of those problems should have been caught by us in the beginning. Our exit strategy worked pretty well since we love the house and won't mind staying until the time is right to sell. We financed with an FHA 203k loan. Like Mary said above, if you are knowledgeable about architecture and design and can offer something a typical old (or new) house can't, your crop of buyers will appreciate and pay for that.

I, personally, think whatever you can do to carve out a niche would be beneficial. Rehab Addict, while ridiculous at times, gave me a lot of confidence that sometimes you just need to get your hands dirty and there is a solution to every problem. People LOVE old houses - well, they love houses with charm - but they want a modern kitchen and bath and updated electrical and all that fun expensive stuff. We bought a Chicago bungalow in Oak Park a year ago and spent a lot of time and money making into what we hope is a perfect mixt of charm and modern amenities. Our hope is to sell it this Spring and do the whole thing over again gleaning from our experience with this first house. If you know going into it that the electrical and plumbing all needs to be replaced then it won't be a shock to the budget. When we have our business model up and running it will be focused less on speed and cost and a little more on details and creating houses people can't live without once they walk in. In my mind this all sounds good but who knows if it will work! If you are passionate about old homes it means other people are too. It will be all about finding that perfect mix of time, money, modern and old that turns a profit. Good luck!

Not sure what type of interior design your cousin is looking to go into - commercial/residential - but a lot of the business in my experience is about who you know and who is willing to give you a chance. Home staging companies might be willing to hire people without accredited degrees in design as well as companies that are retailers, but have people on staff who help customers with design decisions such as Pottery Barn, West Elm, CB2, etc. I know West Elm for sure has an in-home consultation service now where employees with more experience can really get into  a client relationship more. Hope this helps! I went to college for Communications and later for a degree in Interior Design from the Illinois Institute of Art.

@Ben Wilson We did go ahead and use a 203k loan for our first 'deal'. We bought just about the cheapest house we could stomach in Oak Park that wasn't threatening the fall over in a gust of wind and turned it into the best house on the block. It was an extremely enlightening process. Our lender was fantastic and really helped everything move quickly. We probably would have closed in 30 days had we not gone back and forth with the owners trying to negotiate the price. We learned so much and having the security of the loan helped some hiccups along the way not turn into disasters. We had a lot of help…a lot. My boss is an architect and he signed the drawings I stayed up all night fretting over so that we didn't need to pay an architect or engineer, my parents let us stay with them when the construction schedule flew out the window, and our HUD consultant was always a phone call away when we had a question. I think we were lucky in some ways and unlucky in others, but in the end, our house is so amazing we almost want to just keep it….but what's the fun in that? We are getting the itch again.

Here is a quick Before and After

We are looking for our first 'deal' and have a question about school districts. We have secured a pre-approval for an FHA 203k loan for our first house in the suburbs of Chicago Illinois but we are finding the towns we think will will be good for selling our renovated house in a year or so (Oak Park, Riverside, River Forest, etc.) have really high property taxes and its partially because they have wonderful schools. Berwyn, specifically South Berwyn, attracted us with lower house prices, lower taxes, and a good feel as we drive around, but the schools don't have very good ratings. I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to sell our house when it comes time if we take the chance on this area. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks so much for the warm welcome! Good to see that we have at least scratched the surface of a good start. I'm absolutely humbled by the willingness of people willing to help on this site. I'm always available to help on design items - pretty sure that is about all I'm qualified to offer at this point. :)

Greetings all! My name is Lisa and I currently live in the West Loop area of Chicago and work as an interior designer. My boyfriend and I are in the stage of gathering information and formulating a plan to begin flipping in our spare time which will hopefully snowball into a full time gig. He's the numbers guy and I have experience with construction and aesthetics so we will make a good team. We are thinking of rolling buying our first home in with our first "deal" as a somewhat safe way to get our feet wet. We are thinking of going the FHA 203k route in one of the nicer areas west of the city (Oak Park, Elmwood Park, Riverside, etc) so that we can take advantage of the lower down payment, rehab loan, etc. After living there for a year or so, if we goofed up and can't sell it, then at least we have a place to live! Has anyone else done this or thought about it? We know it makes for a slow start, but we don't have the traditional 20% down nor the reserves to take on reno. Ideally, this deal will work out in our favor and we can start financing much quicker deals. Also, if anyone has a recommendation for someone they have worked with on getting a 203k (we are thinking streamline at this point) loan, please send me a message.