We Love City Terraces: 1255 N. State Parkway
There are quite a few terraces in The Churchill, at 1255 N. State Parkway, in the Gold Coast but you wouldn’t know it from walking by. Most of the terraces are interior to the building or on the roof.
This second floor unit with a terrace just came on the market. The terrace is 12 x 4.
Here’s the listing:
NEWLY RENOVATED VINTAGE GEM W/ 2 OUTDOOR SPACES AT THE CHURCHILL. SUN-FILLED 2ND FLR HOME W/ LARGE BALCONY + PRIVATE TERRACE. ORIGINAL DETAILS INCL PLASTER WALL & CEILING MOLDINGS, DOOR HARDWARE & BARREL-VAULTED D.R. CEILING.
STUNNING NEW BATH W/ WALK-IN MARBLE SHOWER & HEATED FLR. NEW UPDATED KITCHEN W/ HONED STONE COUNTERS. ABUNDANT CLOSET SPACE. NEWER PELLA WINDOWS. NEW A/C UNIT.
Patrick Lynch at Prudential Preferred has the listing.
Unit #2J: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, no square footage given
- Sold in May 1988 for $99,000
- Sold in January 1995 for $91,500
- Sold in November 1998 for $174,000
- Sold in March 2001 for $240,000
- Sold in January 2004 for $278,000
- Sold in November 2007 for $330,500
- Currently listed for $360,000
- Assessments of $861 a month (assessments include everything except phone)
- Taxes of $3,597
- No central air- window units
- No w/d in the unit
- No parking
I’ve always LOVED this building. However, the lack on in unit laundry and central air kills the appeal for me. I’m OK with parking down the street. Heck, you’re in the heart of the GC so really don’t need a car.
“assessments include everything except phone”
Does this really mean that electricity is included, too?
The delusional price / 10% appreciation in under a year doesn’t kill it before the W/D?
Great vintage details, though. Love the floors.
I love this building, and love this apt. Beautiful place with private outdoor space-very rare.
I would give the 2002 price for this. That is where everything is goig.
I don’t see the obsession with parking- who needs a car on the north lakefront? If you do, you can figure most older buildings dont have it, so you’d better make arrangements for it on your own.
Hey Laura:
How are you calculating the 2002 price? Pro rating the time and $ increase b/t the ’01 sale and the ’04 sale?
800 a month better include electricity, all the premium channels, the fastest internet, etc.
Not only that, but I’d be blasting the air while having the windows open. Nearly $900 a month, sheesh. Nothing like rent AND a mortgage.
Lovely building
Doesn’t this building have (had?) a special assessment?
This unit is a joke. You can get 2brs/1bas in the South Loop with private terraces for 270k and much lower assessments. The seller is expecting 270% appreciation over 13 years and 10% from their 2007 price.
Sounds like another person who watched one too many episodes of ‘Flip this House’ and had more financial leverage than sense. I think this flipper got the math wrong in that ridiculous assessments are supposed to detract from the asking price of a unit, not add to it!
$1k assessments/month..lol.
err..1160/month in assessments + taxes.
This unit was featured before: http://cribchatter.com/?p=139
Looks like this seller (the buyer before) repainted and put in new countertops in the kitchen (replacing a nice bright blue tile, but the cabinets and stove look suspiciously similar). No bathroom pictures included before. Clearly that is $30K of renovations…
Bob, oh Bob..
Can you really compare living in the South Loop to living in the Gold Coast?
Full time Doorman, I am guessing. Those of you chasing $125/month assessemnts in posh buildings are dreaming.
You are paying for a lifestyle here. If you are preoccupied with cutting coupons, this is probably not your neighborhood.
I would give the 2002 price for this. That is where everything is goig.
Oh, we’re headed below that — prices will overshoot on the downside. Patience.
Full time doorman is one of the reasons I probably won’t include highrises in my housing search when I’m ready to buy. I’ll pay for the location but not for the cost of security; I can unlock the door myself, thanks.
I have not before now really considered that prices might go below 2002 levels, but they just might when it becomes evident that the housing bailout will not work, and that there’s no way the taxpayers can really back up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae with their $5 trillion dollars worth of shaky loans, without destroying our currency and financial system completely.
That will mean that these two agencies will no longer serve as places for lenders to shift their risk to, by selling them all those mortgages.
If there is no one to shift the risk to, lenders will get much tighter with the bucks, and this could cause extreme overshoot on the downside.
Save your money. We could see prices well worth giving up restaurant meals and new clothes in order to make a down payment on.
You are paying for a lifestyle here. If you are preoccupied with cutting coupons, this is probably not your neighborhood.
Aint that the truth? Bernanke and Paulson have killed the bond market. I can barely afford to live in the West Loop!
“This unit was featured before: http://cribchatter.com/?p=139
Looks like this seller (the buyer before) repainted and put in new countertops in the kitchen (replacing a nice bright blue tile, but the cabinets and stove look suspiciously similar). No bathroom pictures included before. Clearly that is $30K of renovations…”
Kevin: Thanks for pointing that out! Hilarious. I hadn’t noticed because there are several terrace units in the building and also probably because of the kitchen counters re-do.
Well- at least people can see what work was done to the unit if they click on the link to the old post.
Listening to you guys, one wonders how I manage to even survive with my pristine, efficient commercial-grade laundry facilities in the basement of my building.
The doorman expense exists, but it’s probably only on the order of $100/month depending on the number of units in the building. Utilities and required maintenance (structural, elevators, garbage) eat up the vast majority of expense in most condo associations.
Well, then, the 2001 price.
The sales history of this place is very interesting in that it constitutes a great graph of the 10-year housing bubble.
Look at the diff between the 1995 price and the 1998 price. WOW-it nearly doubled in price in three short years.
Then, another big leap of 35% between 1998 and 2001.
The price histories of condos and houses in lesser areas look exactly the same. Rogers Park and Edgewater followed EXACTLY the same trajectory, as did houses in Jefferson Park and Evanston, as did places in so many other cities. Different nabes, different cities with different economies, yet we see the same really stratospheric appreciation in a very short time frame.
Go back 50 years, pick almost any location in the U.S. you please, and you can chart a line that is almost flat from 1950-1970, which are the years that were the peak of U.S. prosperity and stability; then starts to show a really marked upswing through the 70s, then from 1985 forward, the line goes straight up like a rocket. Then, chart incomes for the past 50 years and overlay the other, and you can see how much we have NOT prospered in the past 25 years, as incomes, which grew relative to costs of necessities during our peak, have stagnated while housing costs have soared.
Every boom spawns a bust, and we could see a period of declining house values that is a mirror-reverse of the wild run-up in prices of the past 10 years, and be looking at 5-10 years of prices that first steeply decline, then bump along the bottom for a number of years as the housing prices re-align themselves with incomes, and our credit markets recover from catastrophic losses from bad loans.
Daave–sure you can unlock your door yourself; and in a multi-unit building, especially a large one, each of your neighbors or your neighbors’ renters, can open YOUR door, too. Doormen serve a purpose. It’s called security.
I wish I could save the following sentence in some sort of automated comment feature to be posted on articles like this: Another delusional seller is hoping for peak prices in a declining market. The unit will sit until they come to their senses.
Regarding the parking, many people who live along the lake front on the north side such as myself do want to keep a car. The reason is that we sometimes need to go somewhere other than the loop or the mag mile, which are about the only parts of the city adequately served by public transit. Luckily I don’t have to drive to work, but I use my car almost every weekend.
I listed and sold a small studio unit in this building a few years ago. The Churchill is a building that sells on “charm” and “reputation” – not “bells & whistles.” What you lack in terms of parking, central air, etc. is offset by the excellent location, quality of construction/amenities and history (which is displayed proudly near the doorperson’s desk).
The assessments are high, but again, this is Gold Coast Vintage, not Wicker Park new construction. Yes, everything but land-line phone is included. You get internet via the cable TV.
There was a special assessment a few years ago to cover repairs to the terra-cotta exterior. I imagine that most unit owners have paid it off by now. (My client had to pay his balance with proceeds from the sale.)
Doorpeople are “jewels beyond price” IMHO. They screen visitors, call you when your pizza guy arrives, hold US Mail and Fed Ex packages that arrive for you during the day, etc. Reward them well at the holidays, people!
My major beef with the Churchill is when an MLS listing talks about the great “balcony/terrace” without mentioning that it faces the alley rather than the street. Some people like that for privacy reasons; others think it’s just plain weird.