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Chicago is a wonderful place to buy a condo.  The real estate there is low, but is rising rapidly, which makes right now a perfect time to buy.  If you are looking to rent out a condo for now and you want future use of it, Chicago is a great place to do this.  Before purchasing a condo in Chicago, it is a good idea to know a little bit about the windy city. 

The streets are organized in a grid pattern which makes it an easy place to get around in, thus assisting in your condo purchase. The pattern is modified by the shoreline, the three branches of the Chicago River, the system of active/inactive rail lines, several diagonal streets, the expressways, and hundreds of bridges and viaducts. In addition, the baselines for numbering streets and buildings are State Street (for east-west numbering) and Madison.

Madison Street, in addition to simply being an origin point for north-south numbering, also divides the city into two well-established areas, the North Side and the South Side. The rivalry between the North and South sides are distinct, etched from different ethnic origins and historical developments, as well as culminating in the contemporary rivalry between the two Chicago baseball teams - the Chicago Cubs are considered to be the representative team for the North Side, whereas the Chicago White Sox are considered to be the South Side's counterpart. Note that despite the primary focus on the North-South rivalry, there are other geographic designations for the city, most commonly being the West Side, which broadly encompasses the area west of both the north and south branches of Chicago River. The Northwest and Southwest sides of the city area also referenced with frequency, though they tend to be subsumed under one of the three aforementioned areas.

Street numbers begin at "1" at the baselines and run numerically in directions indicated to the city limits, with N, S, E, and W indicating directions. Chicago is divided into one-mile sections which usually contain eight blocks to the mile. Chicago streets were renumbered in 1909. This adjustment was responsible for the current eight blocks to one mile rule, with the exception of the streets for three miles immediately south of Madison. Between Madison and Roosevelt (12th), twelve blocks are used per mile, between Roosevelt and Cermak (22nd Street), ten blocks make one mile, and between Cermak and 31st Street nine blocks make a mile. Even-numbered addresses are on the north and west sides of streets; odd-numbered addresses are on the south and east sides.

Today, many high-rise buildings are located in the downtown area, notably in the Loop and along the lakefront and the Chicago River. The three tallest buildings are the Sears Tower (also the tallest building in the United States), the Aon Center, and the John Hancock Center. The rest of the city consists of low-rise buildings and single-family homes. There are clusters of industrialized areas, including the lakefront near the Indiana border, the area south of Midway Airport, and the banks of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.