$130K Reduction in Irving Park: 4251 N. Mozart
This small building at 4251 N. Mozart is a new construction conversion in Irving Park, just south of the Ravenswood neighborhood.
A duplex down first floor unit has been on the market since April 2007. It’s been reduced several times and is now priced at $130k less than a year and a half ago.
Will it sell at the new price?
Here’s the listing:
2500 SQ FT DUPLEX W/FINISHED TOP FLOOR 2 BEROOMS / FULL BATH PARKING. LOWER LEVEL HAS NOT BEEN TOTALLY FINISHED. 1000 SQ FT WITH NEW MECHANICALS & NEW WINDOWS IN LOWER LEVEL. BEAUTIFUL UNIT FOR THE PRICE.
Leslie Tilton at Prudential Preferred has the listing. See more pictures and a virtual tour here.
Unit #1S: 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 2500 square feet, unfinished lower level
- Originally listed in April 2007 for $429,900
- Reduced several times
- Currently listed for $299,900 (parking included)
- Assessments of $165 a month
- Taxes are “new”
Way overpriced for the area when I can get the same 2br for 250ish in the South Loop.
I actually feel bad for people who bought POS duplex conversions similar to this for $400k or more. They are the greater fools.
These types of conversions suck. Especially the duplex into the basement type conversions. They flood, they are a pain to evenly heat/cool, the quality of the construction is horrible and with the market being slow and all, the developer often tries to rent the unsold units. I know of a building – 18 unit conversion – the developer sold only 10. He rented out 7 of the 8 remaining – some to Section 8 people. Then he had the audicity to put a very large “ONLY 1 UNIT LEFT!!” sticker on the sign in front of the building. Yeah this building has 6 duplex downs and they all flood!
homedelete, its the same story on all the marketing from developers. “90% sold”, “1 unit left”, “price increase coming soon!”. They flat out lie to your face, and we still buy from these sleezeballs.
What a shame – take a nice old building like that and rip every bit of character out of it!
Wow it is approaching $100/sf…at the end of the day this unit IS still 2,500 sf, which is a lot, so I think its priced right or near right finally.
I don’t see good neighborhoods in Chicago being priced at $100/sf any time soon.
“LOWER LEVEL HAS NOT BEEN TOTALLY FINISHED” – I assume that whatever mickey mouse warranty that there would have been on it is even worth less then ?
“price increase coming soon!” – You’d have to be a total moron to fall for that one in a slow market. Does Wal-Mart increase the price of Christmas decorations on December 26th? Hell no, they cut it in half to get rid of the excess inventory.
Of course, there are definitely people who fall for this kind of sales garbage. After all, someone paid nearly 3/4 of a million dollars for that one bedroom condo in 340 on the Park.
“approaching $100/sf”
Nah. The lower level is 1000 sqft; it’s not likely that the upper level is that much bigger. It’s probably more like 2200 sqft and only 1200 of it really counts (and even that has no appliances). With the work still to be done, it’s more like it’s still $150/ft. And neither of the bedrooms is more than okay, size-wise.
Looks like they forgot to make room for a Double Door Fridge.
Were another bedroom and bathroom planned for the lower level?
Finishing below grade spaces in older buildings is disastrous. The foundations and floors are not sufficiently water and vapor proofed; not to mention certain areas of the City that are termite dense. So if the termites don’t eat your duplex down, it will disintegrate due to mold within a decade. And rats love to nest in the space between the foundation and finished walls with all that good insulation to raise their young in. If the contractor did a really crappy rehab, you’ll know about all the old floor drains that were not properly terminated as your “finished space” will always have a sewer gas odor.
I was recently at a party hosted in a 100+ year-old Wicker Park home in which the first floor was partly below grade. The bathroom with its high-end fixtures reeked of mold and rat piss. In other parts of the home where the brick and stone was left exposed, the building really showed its age with white fuzzy leachate and mortar falling out of the joints.
The problem with these old buildings is that bricks don’t last forever. In the neighborhoods that were left to rot after the migration to the suburbs in the 1950s, buildings in those areas went for decades with deteriorating roofs and gutters that probabaly shortened the useful life of many structures that were turned into condos or high-end SFH’s.
I owned and lived a 90+ year-old brick building for twenty years. The two lessons I learned: Don’t leave anything in your basement you’re not willing to throw away, and become friends with a good, dependable tuckpointer.