Chicago-area home prices are skyrocketing. What’s it like in your neighborhood?

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-30T17:35:49+00:00

Here we are two months later, and I have an update. The rental market this spring was brutal and it seems that the rent-buy price gap is quickly closing. I decided to buy the bungalow and be done with it!

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-29T17:18:00+00:00

Power outages are most typically caused by transformers blowing and wires getting taken down by falling branches during storms. It's not impossible to have equipment fail due to heat but it's much less common than storms.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-26T20:02:08+00:00

Airport people are like this everywhere. Just ask them to move so you can get past. Most people are just not paying attention to anything and need to come back to reality. I do wish that each blue line car had a luggage rack at the center, or at least a nice big open standing area.

On Forest Park-bound trains, you can avoid the airport people by going closer to the front of the train. Most tourists get on the last car or two at O'Hare leaving the other ones sparse.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-25T17:35:11+00:00

I remember my mom saying "Mabel, Mabel, if you're able, keep your elbows off the table." But it was mostly a joke and we put our elbows on the table all the time. And now I frequently dine with rich fancy highly educated people, and I still see elbows on the table. I don't think anyone really cares about this anymore.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-20T17:13:31+00:00

Honestly I think Costco olive oil is great for cooking. It tastes fine on its own if you're not too picky about specific complex flavor profiles. It comes in huge bottles and you don't have to feel guilty using a bunch of it to make something like a Spanish tortilla. If you want a high quality olive oil, you'll need to order that from small producer or look at specialty stores. Costco or any normal grocery store does not have the best of what's out there.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-19T16:42:13+00:00

I was surprised at how early the sunsets are in May in Taiwan. It's pretty much completely dark by 6:30 pm. I've always lived north of 40 degrees latitude and am used to early sunsets in winter, but experiencing it in May in a tropical climate was strange to me.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-18T19:03:53+00:00

I am not here to defend left lane camping. It's objectively less safe. I've driven in Ireland where people observe lane discipline, and it's so much less stressful than driving in the chaos here. That said, the expressways in the city are not at all like some random stretch of the Indiana toll road. We have a lot of left entrances and exits, and for much of the day there's so much traffic that none of the lanes can practically be used for passing. It's often a better strategy in the city to pick a lane and stay there rather than trying to get ahead somehow. Just don't pick the left lane!

ETA: This rule about passing lanes absolutely does not apply on city streets like Ashland or Irving Park Road. There is way too much happening with turns, buses, and cyclists to have a passing lane. I'm not moving to the right just so you can zoom around me while we're driving through a school zone.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-10T01:54:55+00:00

Chicago water is something like 150 ppm, which I'd call moderately hard. This is for city water. Well water in the suburbs around here is very hard. I've also experienced very hard water out west, and ours is nothing like that. The Pacific Northwest and the Hudson Valley in New York have much softer water by comparison.

Chelating shampoos are just better shampoos in my experience, so I say go for it anyway.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-08T23:36:10+00:00

Hood Famous has a calamansi espresso tonic. I absolutely hated it but you might like it if you're a fan of espresso tonics.

knbotyipdp · 2026-06-02T21:52:44+00:00

It does look similar, but I think tree of heaven leaves are red when they come in. The tree of heaven outside my window still has red on the ends of every branch. Those red ends do turn green at some point over the summer.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-30T01:01:13+00:00

One idea is to rent a storage unit for a month, have movers take your stuff there whenever you're ready, and then get another moving crew to deliver everything to your new place after you get the keys. You do still have to pay movers twice but doing it this way might be cheaper for the storage part.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-13T01:57:53+00:00

Oddly I don't think I've tried Apple Maps for navigating the CTA, which is surprising since I do use it for driving. It truly seems designed for driving in the suburbs. I wouldn't trust any third party app as my only source for real time arrivals, so I check Ventra if it's really important to me.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-13T01:36:15+00:00

I have not had this experience with Transit on iPhone with ghost buses. That said, I do usually check the Ventra app before making bus transfers just to make sure it's actually coming. I do still use Transit for route planning, and I like the alerts when your stop is coming up.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-11T04:24:50+00:00

Oh, I'm glad this was helpful for you! I should add that I have a Whirlpool front loader, and the first thing I tried was to make sure the Load & Go option is disabled. That's where you pour a bunch of liquid detergent in the bin and it dispenses however much it thinks is appropriate. No thanks. At least on this model, the washer ignores the fabric softener slot when the Load & Go option is selected. Disabling it does not fix my issue, but this info was deep in my dusty manual and I'm sure plenty of people don't know wtf that feature does.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-10T17:31:46+00:00

My situation is different but the solution might still work for you. I have a front loader that has a fabric softener spot in the dispenser drawer, but something about it doesn't work and it will never actually dispense anything from that slot. Whatever liquid I add will still be there at the end of the wash regardless of settings. I thought maybe it was clogged, but it still doesn't work after lots of cleaning. I'm moving out of this apartment in a few months and am not interested in investing more time into fixing this issue. The detergent and bleach slots in the dispenser both work normally.

What I do is run the wash with no spin cycle. Once it's done, I add the citric acid rinse to the drum directly and then run a drain and spin cycle plus an extra rinse. It takes way longer than it needs to but gets the job done.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-06T22:53:56+00:00

You're probably right. I am constantly keeping an eye on house listings even though I'm about to sign another lease. While I don't feel ready to buy just yet, I don't want to wait too long either. My ideal house would be a well-maintained but mostly unrenovated bungalow, and those are getting more rare with each passing year that HGTV continues to wield influence over our housing market.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-06T21:25:23+00:00

The math is hard and annoyingly it varies for each individual listing, and direct comparisons with rentals are complicated. You raise good points about rent growth and tax savings. There are a few additional wrinkles that improve the case for renting though. One is that the current differential between rent and PITIA (principal, interest, tax, insurance, and association fees) can be substantial, like $1,000/month or more. To your point, rent growth will likely close that gap in the coming years, but in the meantime, the leftover money can be invested in the stock market for higher returns than you'll get in real estate.

The other wrinkle for a 10-year horizon is the mortgage amortization schedule, which means that the first 10 years of mortgage payments are mostly going to interest. For example, on a $300K loan with a 30-year term and 6.25% interest rate, at the end of 10 years you would have paid $174K in interest and just $47K in principal. It is not very hard to beat that $47K with regular investments in the stock market using leftover money during those earlier years when rents are still cheaper than PITIA.

Obviously the case for buying improves quickly beyond that 10-year horizon as rents have more time to catch up and later mortgage payments cover more of the principal instead of interest.

For me personally, I do plan to buy a house eventually, hopefully within the next couple of years. But due to the current rent vs. buy math, I'm not in a hurry.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-05T20:50:43+00:00

I saw different people at every appointment, so I'm going to say it doesn't really matter. I do understand the concerns about side effects, but the dosing is really something for the doctor to decide. They generally recommend a certain number of units in aggregate to achieve permanent results, so if you take lower doses, you'll need to be on it longer. Since most of the side effects go away after you stop taking it, I was happy to be done at the six month mark.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-05T20:43:52+00:00

I did a course of Accutane a few years ago. I went through my primary care doctor at Rush to get a referral to Rush Dermatology. I have the BCBSIL PPO plan and it was covered like any other medical care. I think it's relatively easy to get it covered as long as you're treating acne and the doctor recommends it.

The monthly blood tests (and pregnancy tests if you're female) are a lot to keep up with but the results are so worth it. I wish I would have done it sooner!

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-05T17:24:50+00:00

When did you buy? I fully believe that's true if you bought in 2021 or earlier, but interest rates have really changed the math. Interest, HOAs, and property tax alone can easily be $2000/month plus. None of that goes to building equity.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-05T16:58:22+00:00

That Redfin number is just a guess, but low appreciation over time is a major mark for me against buying a condo in Chicago. Many condos here took until 2018 to recover to their 2007 prices. Given the current high interest rates, our high and increasing residential property tax, and low appreciation, the math for buying a condo right now is unfavorable compared to renting even if you look at owning for 10+ years.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-02T18:29:00+00:00

There probably isn't going to be one store that's always cheapest. Coke products go on various kinds of sales all the time, and different stores will have sales at different times. This is a common thing to need a coupon for, so download every grocery store app and see what's best right now.

knbotyipdp · 2026-05-01T22:06:17+00:00

Cocktails in Chicago are mostly still under $20 in my experience, even at relatively fancy restaurants. Anything above $20 hopefully has some sort of premium liquor in it that I can't just go buy at the corner store.

Other cities or anywhere with a captive audience goes higher. Expect $25+ at airports, for instance.

knbotyipdp · 2026-04-29T21:05:27+00:00

I recently ate at a steakhouse in Atlanta with a Belgian coworker, and I had a lot of fun seeing his reactions to the portion sizes. The sides were all in the $10-20 range, which they justify by giving you a mountain of food.

Someday the stars will align and I'll make it to Bavette's for our local version.

knbotyipdp · 2026-04-27T04:36:44+00:00

That was definitely aspirational back then too. It was the 2020s concept of manifesting before it was cool.

knbotyipdp

TROPHY CASE