The most useful research I can give a first-time buyer costs about forty dollars and takes one evening. Go eat dinner on the block you're thinking about buying on. Then go back and eat there again on a Tuesday.
I mean it. Restaurants are the most honest thing on a street. A listing photo shows you the kitchen. A dinner shows you the neighborhood.
Take Randolph Street in the West Loop. On a Friday night between Halsted and Ogden, it's packed. Valets are double-parked, there's a wait at most doors, and people are still on the sidewalk at 11. If you're looking at a condo half a block off Randolph, that's exciting for about three weekends. After that, it's the reason you can't find parking and your bedroom window hums until midnight. Plenty of buyers want exactly that. The ones who don't usually figure it out after closing.
Park Ridge runs on a different clock. In Uptown, around Prospect Avenue and the Metra station, restaurants fill up early and empty out early. Families are seated by 5:30, and the Pickwick Theatre marquee is lit across the street. By 9, it's quiet. For a lot of first-time buyers coming out of a city apartment, that quiet is the whole point. For others, it feels like somebody turned the lights off.
Here's my honest opinion: most buyers tour homes at the worst possible time to judge a neighborhood. Saturday at 1 p.m. tells you almost nothing, because everywhere looks pleasant at 1 p.m. on a Saturday. I'd rather you see the street at dinnertime, and then again on a weeknight once the novelty's worn off.
While you're sitting there, pay attention to a few things:
- Who's eating. Couples, strollers, coworkers from the office buildings nearby? - How many people walked there compared with how many pulled up in a car. - What the block sounds like when you step outside at 10.
Ask your server how long they've worked there, too. Restaurant staff can tell a neighborhood is changing long before it shows up in the MLS. They see who's new, who stopped coming, and which storefront has been dark since spring.
If you're torn between two neighborhoods, send me the addresses at zyren@blacklabelrealty.com and I'll tell you which nights to go.
Hold the offer until after the second dinner.