Water Front Location that's Realistically Priced! If you're looking for a place on the water in the Vernon Hills area, this is a fantastic townhome at a fantastic price. My mother really wanted to live on a lake. She chose the options this home has when the place was built in 1995. Never thought about living on a lake? The great views and the wonderful times you can have on the deck and patio aren't going to cost you much more than a traditional townhouse - but you get to enjoy your new home on the lake for years to come! You've got lake views from the Deck, Patio, Living Room, Dining Room, Loft, Finished Basement and Breakfast areas. The home is in the Stevenson High School district. I'm told people buy houses just to get their kids into that school?   Please note that I don't see children under a few feet tall around the neighborhood. That's probably because it's difficult to watch small children every moment of the day, every day, for the years before they know better than to crawl out to the lake. The house was appraised in July at $340,000. Your bank will have no problem financing this house at that price. A similar house on the same lake, without a walk-out basement, sold for $347,000 in June (it had been on the market for over $419,000 for a long time!). I'll take $349,900. This is an incredible deal. This house is in move-in condition. Everything works. Some of the furniture is available. Having two houses isn't much fun for me, and I don't have the time. This is your opportunity to get a great deal! This isn't a short sale or foreclosure. There's no mortgage on the house. We just want to sell it to someone who will appreciate it, at a reasonable price. We can wait the several years (decades?) it will take to get back to the $400,000 it was worth two years ago - or you can do it.   The house isn't for rent. We're not selling to any of the numerous scam "investors" out there.   About the house...   It's all white. Everything. If you don't like a bright open airy feel to a house, you won't like this house. Accent the white with any color you like - every color will work. The nice big water heater was replaced a couple of years ago. The hot water feels great in the Jacuzzi in the master bath (that also has a separate shower). The master bedroom has a cathedral ceiling, a HUGE walk-in closet with a window (2 doors to the closet), with its own heating and AC vent in the closet (I have that closed!). The vanity front in the master bath was just replaced with new drawer fronts and doors. They're really nice (cost $1,100), and the installer did a first-class job. The white stuff was delaminating on the old ones, and my mother tried to fix it by gluing it - not a good idea. You can see the picture of the master bath with the two sinks and the Jacuzzi in the background. The washer and dryer are in the hallway on the second floor. If you've been dragging your laundry up and down stairs for years, this is a real luxury! I wouldn't give it up at my place for anything. I had no idea what a luxury it was until I got a place with the washer and dryer on the same level as the bedrooms. The kitchen floor was just replaced in June with a nice Armstrong laminate that looks like tile, and a new underlayment was installed. Another first-class job ($2,000). This kitchen floor is really easy to keep clean. The entire house except the finished lower level was repainted (thousands!). Everything is white. Most of the house was painted last December. The closets and bedrooms were painted last June. Did I mention they're white? The heat and air works great. It was checked and freon was added this summer. I turned it down to 68 while I was moving stuff around for the painters, and the place was actually cold on the worst days this summer (I was really sweating without the air, which the painter made me turn off). The ducts were cleaned and sanitized in May. The builder did a nice job with the ductwork. You can reduce the air flow or shut it off to just about every vent in the house from the utility room. There's a nice loft that overlooks the living room over a railing. The builder calls it a loft or bedroom on the floor plan. My mother chose to have it done as a loft. It looks like it would be pretty easy to put up a wall and door to make a 3rd bedroom. The second full bath would be right next to that bedroom door. There's power under a brass plate in the carpet along the railing for a TV or computer. The second bedroom is currently setup with a queen size hide-a-bed and desk, but there's plenty of room for whatever you need in there. It's right across from the 2nd full bath (with a bathtub and mirrored shower doors). Both the 2nd bedroom and loft have big closets. There's a linen closet next to the 2nd bath. There's just tons of storage in this house! There are nice sized living and dining rooms. The living room has a gas fireplace with a built-in screen and logs, and black marble on the floor in front of it. The dining room has a large patio door to the 2nd floor deck. Great place for a grill, with easy access to the dining room and kitchen. The kitchen has a nice size eating area. My mother and father spent most of the time in the house there watching TV, or in the loft. The best thing my mother cooks is peanut butter and jelly. When she added cream cheese, it was like a gourmet meal for me. She didn't use the kitchen to cook much. There's a built-in microwave, a gas oven and stove. The refrigerator was replaced in the last year or two (no ice maker, but it can be added). There's a big pantry, and A LOT of cabinets and drawers. All the windows facing the lake have expensive shutters (white, like everything else in the house). It's easy to open or close the whole shutter, or just the slats. These will last as long as the house is standing. Privacy isn't much of an issue since all those windows face the lake, but the sun does come in on that side of the building in the afternoon. All the windows and patio doors are double pane. The dining room has mirrored vertical blinds. The dining room looks great when they're closed, even without the lake view. There are 2 and a half baths. The powder room is right off the kitchen in the front hall (which also has a nice size closet). Easy access to the bathroom from the kitchen, dining room and living room. The stairs from the lower level are off the kitchen, so the powder room is also convenient to the basement. The finished lower level has a walk-out glass door to the patio along the lake. The lower level wasn't repainted this year, but it hasn't been used much (ever?). There's a big utility room and storage area. The storage area can be converted to a bathroom (the sewer lines are already in the cement floor, plugged up). This basement is truly a lower level. It's not below ground. There are two normal windows in addition to the glass patio door, which all have great lake views. There are regular horizontal blinds on those windows, and regular vertical blinds on the patio door. There's a nice gray carpet that's hardly been walked on. This is a basement I wouldn't mind living in! If this basement ever floods, call Noah right away. If that's something you're dealing with in your current house (like my mother's previous house), it will be nice not to worry about that! There is a sump pump which I have always checked for my mother every couple of months. I did replace the float switch a few years ago. There's a utility tub next to the sump pump that makes it easy to check by running the water. After days of horrendous rain in August, the lake was only about a foot higher than normal. It would take another two or three feet before it gets to the patio door on the lower level of the house. The house and patio is high and dry - ready for the movers. There's a 2 Car Attached Garage, with room for at least 3 good size cars in the long driveway. There's a wireless keypad next to the garage door, so if the batteries die in the remote in your car you can still open the door to drive in (without going through the front door). There's a spigot for a hose in the garage. There's a real wired (not wireless) alarm system with smoke detectors that was installed for about $3,000. It has a keypad on the second floor as well as next to the garage entrance, so you can set the alarm while you're sleeping if you'd like. There have been no murders or rapes around there, but my mother figured you can never be too careful. You can use the monitoring company of your choice (I think I use the best there is if you'd like a recommendation). The house is wired for cable, supplied by Comcast. AT&T (the phone company) sent a letter that their Uverse offering is now available, which has TV, Internet and Phone. Both Comcast and AT&T are jerks. They may offer plain DSL at that address now, but trying to get a straight answer out of AT&T is like talking to your dog or cat about it. It seems that most of the neighbors use Dish for TV. The outside of the building was painted this year. It looks like new. The association takes care of that. They seal the driveway each year, and take care of the grass and plowing. They also maintain the lake. In the pictures you can see some weeds and algae, but when I sent them a letter they took care if it. It's fine now. So what problems does the house have? I haven't noticed much that I haven't already taken care of. I'm going to leave it to the new owner to handle anything else. Get a home inspection, but don't tell me about it. I'm not going to buy a home warranty unless you want to add it to the mortgage, which would be pretty crazy to pay for over 30 years. If you do get a home warranty (which I think is a good idea), I'd suggest Advantage Home Warranty (I spent about a day researching this). They say they never deny any claims, but to get the warranty they actually send out a live human to inspect everything they're going to warranty for you. All the other home warranty companies seem to be a scam, often denying claims or making the service so terrible that you end up fixing the stuff yourself. They just take your word for it that the stuff is working when you buy the warranty, which gives you an idea of why these other companies deny a lot of claims. The carpeting is all a slight off-white, and all original from 1995. It's in pretty nice shape (I could never have kept it that clean!). It was professionally steam cleaned in April. The lower level carpeting wasn't cleaned because it looks like new. I moved some furniture, and you can see where the legs were. I imagine that'll go away? The clear plastic edges of the mirrored blinds in the dining room have yellowed from the sun where they were exposed, but it's not noticeable when they're closed - and doesn't look bad when they're open. I imagine you can buy new empty plastic blinds and slip the mirrored things into the new ones (the mirrored slats are like new). The master bedroom door is hard to close. I think it was OK before the painter was there? There is a gray piece of weather stripping on the 2nd floor deck that's loose. I couldn't find the same stuff at the hardware store. I think it will be better to replace it with the correct stuff (the association's "rules" list the door and window manufacturers). If I press the button for the garage door that's inside the garage (that's just off the front hallway), the garage door doesn't always go up or down. Sometimes you have to press it two or three times. The two remotes work fine. My mother said it was like that since she bought the place, but never used the button so she didn't care. My mother did smoke there. I can't take smoke. I don't smell it when I'm there now, and I haven't had the doors and windows open. The place is pretty much squeaky clean. The deck is original. The association had some scam where they tried to force owners to buy new cedar decks. Most did. I paid a company to come out and fix anything they saw was wrong on the deck. They replaced a warped gate, a couple of pieces of wood and put some screws in. They said the deck was in good shape, and there's no reason to replace it unless I wanted to. There is no question that some day it will eventually need to be replaced, like any deck.