Short Sales Brewing at 2625 N. Clark In Lincoln Park
If you’ve walked up North Clark in Lincoln Park, you can’t help but notice 2625 N. Clark because it’s one of the few highrises on the street.
Built in 1983, the building is 20 stories with 133 units. It does have an attached garage.
It was an apartment building until it was converted into condos in 2005. As you can see from the pictures below, some of the owners bought the upgrade package and some did not.
There are no washer/dryers in the units.
Several one bedroom units are for sale in short sale. Units #1504 and #1804 have the same owner and the same listing on the MLS:
INVESTORS DREAM POSSIBILE SHORT SALE! GREAT LOCATION & RENTED @ $1600/MONTH W/A LAKE VIEW 1/BED 1BATHCONDO IN STUNNING LINCOLN PARK. CLOSE TO THE CTA, WRIGLEY FIELD, RESTAURANTS, SHOPPING, LAKE & EXPRESSWAY.
BUILDING HAS NEW LAUNDRY, EXERCISE ROOM, 24 HOUR DOOR MAN, BIKE ROOM & SUN DECK W/GRILLS. PET FRIENDLY UP TO 50LBS. DEEDED PARKING AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE, MUST SELL ASAP!
Unit #1804: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, about 700 square feet
- Sold in August 2005 for $304,000
- Currently listed for $219,900 (parking $30k extra)
- Assessments of $414 a month
- Regal Realtors has the listing
Unit #1504: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, about 700 square feet
- Sold in August 2005 for $304,500
- Currently listed for $234,900
- Assessments of $414 a month
- Regal Realtors has the listing
Or you can rent either of these units:
- Unit #1804: $1395 a month
- Unit #1504: $1380 a month
Why would you rent when your landlord “must sell ASAP”? Hm…
On the other side is this investor, currently trying to sell two units next to each other on the 18th floor. These two are the most expensive in the building:
CONDO IN THE HEART OF LINCOLN PARK FEATURING GORGEOUS UNOBSTRUCTED VIEWS TO THE WEST. PARKING SPACE AND STORAGE LOCKER INCLUDED IN PRICE!
BUILDING HAS NEW LAUNDRY, EXERCISE ROOM, PARTY ROOM, STORAGE LOCKERS AND BIKE ROOM. PET FRIENDLY UP TO 50 LBS. GREAT EXTRA COMMON PATIO WITH GAS GRILLS.COMBINATION WITH UNIT NEXT DOOR AVAILABLE FOR JUMBO SUITE
Unit #1808: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 705 square feet
- Sold in August 2005 for $318,000 (included the parking spot)
- Originally listed in August 2006 for $360,000
- Currently listed for $349,900 (includes the parking spot)
- Assessments of $476 a month
- Ownacondo.com has the listing
Unit #1807: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 671 square feet
- Sold in July 2005 for $301,000
- Originally listed in August 2006 for $350,000
- Currently listed for $349,900 (parking included)
- Assessments of $445 a month
- Ownacondo.com has the listing
There are no interior pictures of Units #1807 and #1808.
Some units on the market have been upgraded.
Unit #1606: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 671 square feet
- Sold in August 2005 for $303,500
- Currently listed for $284,900 plus $30k for parking
- Assessments of $409 a month
- Mark Cohen and Brenda Lipscher at Coldwell Banker have the listing
[Thanks to the Tipster who sent me listing information for some of these units.]
Ugg, the units are so gross in original condition. Without the laundry in unit and private outdoor space, these investors are doomed. I don’t feel bad for them. Why would they pay over 300K for a unit that could only rent for 1500/month?
I had an owner call me to help him understand his situation and two things impacted these first-time buyers/investment buyers. 1) the developers offered an incentive to pay assessments for two years (to the tune of $400+/mo) and 2) in a new conversion the tax bills don’t really hit for about 24 months. So when they do finally “hit” and the assessments hit, too, suddenly a rent of $1400-1600 that was close-to-covering the P & I is now insufficient to cover the monthlies. Remember, money was cheaper then, too. People could easily get loans with 5% down, even on investment properties. So I personally do feel sorry for them. I truly feel that many of these buyers were unrepresented, too, and didn’t really understand what they were getting into. They were taken advantage of by the developers and the lenders.
Ellen: Were these first time investors? I’m assuming they were.
I’ve heard from many buyers, actually, about not having to pay taxes for two years in a new building or conversion and then being “surprised” when they had to pay! (And these were NOT investors- they were living in the units.)
It seems cheap the first two years until the $5,000 or $10,000 tax bill shows up.
But even if these investors were “unrepresented” – as you say (which I don’t doubt)- weren’t they just victims of their own greed during the boom? They got sucked in by the mantra “real estate only goes up” and then, well, it didn’t.
Real Estate always does go up but long term (say over 5-10years time frame). Not necessarily over 2 or 3 years. If more investors and homeowners used the buy and hold way of investing and didn’t always look short term or panic when prices level out or go down most things would be a lot more stable. To refer back to Streeterville Realtors comment about buying a $300k condo and renting it for $1,500/month goes back to simple investing in real estate. Buy Real Estate minimizing monthly costs by offsetting it with rent and making a profit as the property appreciates in value as you go to sell it 5-10 years later. No disrespect but it’s sad that a realtor doesn’t understand this simple investment process.
Hey, everybody! Agent 007 ^^^
just realized Real Estate is a can’t-lose investment! Buy now and beat the rush! I’ll take 5,000 condos! Anybody know some place with inventory like that?
007 is joking, right? If not, I do disrespect 007 but am happy to see a realtor still honest enough to push the same old lne of BS. Most of them have already changed their tune, although the chorus stays the same, “Its a great time to buy.”
Streeterville Realtor is the exception that proves the rule.
Words like “Always” and “Never” invite disaster when applied to finance.
Agent 007- check out the NYT rent v own calculator. Yes- it’s not perfect- but basically you’re not making “money” on this unit until at least year #11- and that’s with a generous 4% price appreciation (which is unlikely the next few years, in my opinion.)
As an “investor” it will take you decades to make any money off of this by charging $1500 a month in rent.
Sabrina, do I need to point out that you could get 4% price appreciation buying a 30-year treasury bill, which can be sold in about 3 seconds v/s 6 months market time?
No kidding, Just Curious. Mixing up the terms investor and speculator is just as disastrous in real estate.
Just Curious,
Don’t confuse liquidity with safety. A 4% 30 year T-Bond can lose just as much value as real estate. (wait till the foreign investors start turning the screws and demanding higher interest rates for US debt!)
The big advantage of a bond is that you could realize the loss immediately instead of holding it for months (or years)!
There’s also the fact that a T-bond is backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government (take that for what it’s worth) v/s appraisals, comps, and other myths.
I guess my point is that agents serve a useful purpose….just not as an investment advisor.
I really wasn’t saying this condo or building in particular was a good buy and yes the price was overinflated. The condo converter back in 2005 is the one who made the killing.
If you take a 10 year window for the past 40 years the appreciation averages out to 6.3% Now for some of the uneducated on this thread (g and just curious). Average means some years will below 6.3% and even in the negative like the past couple years and some years will be above 6.3%. Buy and hold for at least 5 years is a pretty good timeframe. G and just curious how much have our parents and grandparents houses gone up in value?
Real Estate investing isn’t supposed to be a short term, high return investment in most cases. Let me know if you need to see a graph of how values over “long term” in real Estate. Maybe words are a little hard to interpret and nice pictures will do it.
Agent OO7: Where do you get your information that Chicago area real estate has appreciated 6.3% over the last 40 years? That would be incredibly high.
I’ve never seen the number that high. I’ve only seen it around 3-5% (with 5% being on the high side historically.)
But it does depend on which time period you’re talking about- obviously. A realtor who has been in the business for 30 years told me there was a 7 year stretch in the mid-1980s where prices didn’t go up at all. If you only owned for that time period- it pretty much stunk to be an owner if you had to sell.
If you look at Robert Shiller’s graph of real estate values going back to 1890 (nationwide values)- the appreciation rate is pretty dismal.
Real estate blows, I am buying a big ass sailboat!
Agent007,
I’d be curious to see if your charts actually take into account inflation, I doubt they do. We’ve talked before on this blog how you can make more money quickly in real estate than any other investment class due to its incredible leverage, but this works both ways. During the boom these leverage rates were more than their historical norm of 4 to 1 debt to equity…think 19 to 1 or infinity to one. Some people, mostly via luck but some via skill, made a lot of money in real estate without having a lot of capital to start with. They are much smaller in number than everyone who dabbled in RE investing but good for them. I AM envious of these few who got out in time, just as I am those who sold their dot com stocks in 2000.
After the 1929 stock market crash our government put limits on stock market leverage. Initially it is 2 to 1–you can only borrow one dollar from your broker for every dollar in your account, if your position declines the most it can legally drop to is 3 to 1 before your broker is forced to liquidate your position (margin call). So even in the stock market in the worst of times you never achieve the same leverage you would with conventional real estate putting 20% down.
But over the past few years, instead of people using real estate primarily as a utility and putting 20% down, banks gave money to everyone. Including investors who weren’t using real estate as a utility at all. This speculation was as rampant as any stock market, but this time the investors (some here call them speculators) were much more highly leveraged than they ever could’ve been during the dot com boom.
So this time the damage is not limited to the investors (or speculators) who will be wiped out. They were so highly leveraged doubtless much of their losses will be borne by their lenders. This is going to really FUBAR up the economy in a way the dot com bust never could’ve.
At least in the dot com bust the speculators paid 98%+ for their misdeeds themselves. In this bust the banks are going down with them.
“If you take a 10 year window for the past 40 years the appreciation averages out to 6.3%”
You write this and call others “uneducated”? Troll.