Spring 2018 Edition
All too often, in Chicago and Cook County, local governments seem to believe that every housing problem can be solved by levying more costs on property owners and making their lives more difficult! This can been seen in the relentless property tax increases and ever-growing list of mandates, fees and penalties that apply to property owners who do not strictly follow all of the rules that the city and county seem to take pleasure in constantly expanding.. 
The most recent move in this direction is to bring rent control into the mix of regulations and requirements. Many tenant advocacy groups seem to think that all property owners are rich, heartless, and love nothing more than to gouge their tenants with unreasonable rent increases. There is little willingness to acknowledge that we live in a market economy where it is market forces that determine how much rent a property owner can charge or a tenant is willing to pay. But this is a subject for another article (stay tuned – more are on the way)!

So it is refreshing to see our local branches of government consider new measures to preserve and expand the supply of affordable rental housing that also has the buy-in of property owners. And it is especially refreshing to see the cost of these proposals shared equally by all taxpayers, and not placed solely on the backs of property owners.
Builders Group News
The Rogers Park Builder gets a new format. Starting now, we are going to adopt a web-based delivery system.
RPBG has started the year off with a bang. With Mike Glasser once again serving as President of the organization the organization has already presented two events that have been both well attended and well received. 
The Rogers Park Builders Group has given back to the Rogers Park community since its inception. But, in recent years, this giving has increased significantly.
Ups & Downs
Steve Cain
If you look at a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last ten years, you see an almost unbroken upward trajectory that started early in 2009 at the depth of the Great Recession, and continued until nearly the end of January of this year.

But, as January wrapped up and February began, the clear sailing of earlier years appeared to come to a rather abrupt end. Something shifted in the equities markets. The Dow Jones (and other indexes) began to see-saw wildly from day to day. As I write this column, the Dow has dropped by more than 2,000 points since its January 26th peak.

According to an article in Barron’s, “What Broke the Market… and What Comes Next” (Feb. 10, 2018), the specific catalyst for this destabilization was the release of the January payrolls report showing an unexpectedly sharp increase in wage growth. Inflation fears that had been lurking in the shadows were suddenly front and center. Ten-year Treasuries had already begun a slow rise, climbing from barely over 2% as recently as September 2017 to 2.66% on January 26. In the wake of the payroll report, they jumped up to 2.84% by Feb. 2 and have been trending upward since that time. In late April, they pushed past the 3% threshold, although they have fallen back to the high 2% range since then.
As I See It
In the late ‘60s, before it was common for middle-income families to travel long distances for vacations, my parents and their friends would gather (often over their Saturday night Bridge Club dinners) and discuss their upcoming vacation plans.

Said one family: “We are going to a resort in Indiana.”

Another family opted in: “We hear that Michigan has some great spots. We are going there.”

Not to be outdone, another family chimed that they were visiting Ohio.

I have been recently reminded about these discussions my parents had with their friends during a few meetings I had with a few of my real estate colleagues.
Around Rogers Park
More Headlines From The Neighborhood
Restaurant Review
In researching Rohingya refugee resettlement in Rogers Park, I stumbled across a fun fact. One enterprising family of Rohingya refugees has pursued their version of the American Dream by opening a restaurant on Devon Avenue. This restaurant – aptly named The Family House – enjoys the distinction of being the first and, so far, only restaurant in Chicago to feature Burmese cuisine.

Verella Osborne, President, Legal Document Management, Inc.
Because U.S. criminal and civil laws are separate, a criminal act does not affect a tenant’s civil right to possession of his residence. The first order of business is to confirm the location of the tenant’s incarceration and obtain his inmate number by searching the databases listed below.

A landlord cannot commence eviction proceedings until the tenancy has been breached. Simply being arrested for a crime does not, itself, breach the tenancy. You must have a valid lease in effect with an enforceable criminal activity provision whose language states that no arrest or conviction is necessary and that a breach has been caused by a “preponderance of the evidence.”  

Without this language in your lease, your tenant has to be convicted of a crime before a breach has occurred. This can take years. With the proper language, you may serve a 10-Day Notice for Breach of the lease. However, the CRLTO allows the tenant the right to cure the breach within 10 days, so there must be another criminal act within or shortly after the 10-day cure period to allow you to evict based on that breach.  
(773) 728-9900 | www.rpbg.org
Rogers Park Builders Group encourages and supports responsible residential and commercial property investment, development, and ownership in the Rogers Park community.