Bus tours focus on foreclosed homes
While foreclosures soar nationwide, a Naperville Realtor and a Glendale Heights mortgage broker decided to team up to help suburban buyers match up with emptied homes here.
The site, TourForeclosuresByBus.com, offers first-time homebuyers, investors and others the chance to see six to eight properties in one day via bus.
Their new business has spawned bus tours of bank-foreclosed homes around the suburban Chicago region.
"We're not bottom-feeders," said Danny McGlone, a broker at New Liberty Mortgage. "The people are already out of these homes. We've got about a year's backlog of homes on the market and we need to sell them."
His partner, Jodi Kilani of ReMax of Naperville, said their jobs are not associated with this new bus tour business. But a lot of professionals in related fields, such as contractors, lenders and others, are those they've known throughout the years and could help the new homebuyers.
A list of referrals is provided to bus tour participants, along with educational materials, appraisals and estimated costs of possible repairs for each property. They also get lunch, they said.
"We want to teach people the right way to buy these homes," said Kilani.
The tour costs $100 for one person and $150 if you bring a friend. This is for the tour that includes homes priced at $300,000 or less. For the more expensive homes, the ticket price is $250.
The day usually starts around 8:30 a.m. with a meeting at ReMax's parking lot in Naperville. The bus returns about 5 p.m., Kilani said.
The properties include single family homes, multi-units, condos, commercial and open land.
They have already done a few bus tours, with about 50 to 60 people on each tour. Upcoming tour dates include May 10 and June 7.
"The busses have been filling up like crazy," said McGlone.
Surfing: Suburban schools are among the participants in the FIRST Robotics Competition, hosted by Motorola Inc. and FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). A team called Wild Stangs, a combination of Rolling Meadows and Wheeling high school students, as well as Cobalt Blue, seventh-graders from Lincoln Middle School in Mount Prospect, are participating this weekend.
Competitions include such things as racing robots around a track to knock down 40-inch inflated balls and moving them around the track, passing them over or under a 6-foot, 6-inch overpass.
Students worldwide competed in regional competitions for a chance to advance to the championship in Atlanta. Other schools are from Florida, New York and Georgia. They are competing with their robots before an audience of thousands at the Georgia Dome. More than 220 high school students have participated in Motorola-sponsored teams this year.
Motorola and FIRST have teamed up for 20 years. This year, the Motorola Foundation has provided nearly $860,000 and more than 100 volunteers to support 15 FIRST Robotics Competition teams and 110 FIRST Lego League teams that introduce students to real-world applications of engineering and innovation.
• High net-worth consumers in the U.S. have rated Bang & Olufsen (www.bang-olufsen.com) the most prestigious luxury audio and video brand in the 2008 Luxury Brand Status Index survey from the independent New York City-based Luxury Institute. Bang & Olufsen's North American operations are headquartered in Arlington Heights.