The Under $200,000 1-Bedroom in Streeterville: 222 E. Pearson
Pearson on the Park, at 222 E. Pearson, in Streeterville (or is that the Gold Coast?) is an apartment to condo conversion that started closings in 2005.
This 1-bedroom unit has recently been reduced and is now priced $25,100 under the 2006 purchase price.
Other 03 tier units on similar lower floors sold for a bit less in 2006- around $200,000. But there were various upgrade packages available.
Is this now a deal for the area?
It is located only about 2 blocks east of Water Tower Place and the Mag Mile.
Vilas Realty Corporation has the listing. See the pictures here.
Unit #203: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, no square footage listed
- Sold in July 2006 for $225,000
- Originally listed in December 2008 for $249,900
- Reduced numerous times
- Currently listed for $199,000 (parking available in the building for extra)
- Assessments of $293 a month
- Taxes of $2871
- Central Air
- W/D in the unit
- Bedroom: 12×12
- Living room: 17×11
- Kitchen: 11×9
I hate it when used house sales people include more than one photo of views NOT from the unit for sale. We get it. The views from the rooftop are stunning. From the looks of it tho, the views from the living room are shite and get little if any direct sunlight. Do not pass go, do not collect $200,000.
I like when agents take photos of the lobby areas like its the living room of the condo they are selling. That’s another hilarious and stupid trick.
You mean you can’t sleep in the lobby if you are a legitimate condo owner of a unit in the building?
Sometimes I come home so wasted and want to pass out but don’t want to take the risk of puking in my own bedroom and mucking up my condo. I always thought I could just pass out in the nice, luxurious lobby instead and if it comes up let the HOA deal with it?
Is this not what luxurious lobbies are for?
“You mean you can’t sleep in the lobby if you are a legitimate condo owner of a unit in the building?”
No thats the guest couch for the section 8 tenants!
Furniture in the lobby isn’t intended for actual use! It’s just there to look pretty… house rules usually forbit any actual use of said furniture — like my building’s ban on eating or conducting business on the circular tables w/ 4 chairs each in 2 of the corners. Haven’t figured out what legitimate uses people might have to use them…
There are a couple I’ve seen at 10 E. Ontario as well (American Invsco though). This one doesnt look too bad for someone young like me, and it does have a washer/dryer in unit. I would however like to see the actual square footage. It might be an absolute shoebox.
So your sunk costs are $532/month for taxes/assessments. Lets say, the market they’re going for (college grads with a decent job, you know, the under 25 crowd) managed to save up 10%.
Bankrate.com says I can get a 200k loan with 5% down with an estimated payment of $999/month. Now, I have 10% and a high credit rating so that might be able to be knocked down to $950/month.
$950 + $532 = $1482 a month give or take plus PMI. I would say, depending upon the building and layout, and some other personal factors this MIGHT be worth it if you were planning on staying in it for 5+ years, but the person in the market for a place like this will most likely be getting married within that time frame and you know what that means.
Kids and the burbs.
I would give this one a fair rating IF the buyer had a sizeable down payment to bring monthly costs down.
http://imgprd.nrtwebservices.com/Chicago1/Properties/JPG_Main/454/924454_7.Jpg
Anyone catch the exposed piping? Awesome.
North exposure. Second floor unit. I think it looks over the roof of the building. Doesn’t look like there would be an opportunity for too much sun unless it;s on the N.E. corner of the building.
Too funny.
Several members of this forum *itch and whine about not being able to afford a condo ‘in the city’…you are now presented with probably the only option left open to you and it gets bashed big time.
That’s it kids, keep whining and renting and see what you life is like 15-20 years from now when you have nothing to show for all that phat cash you’ve been making all these years.
…Babies…
But anyway, lesson should be learned about how you go about furnishing an affordable (cheap) small one bedroom condo. That hideous couch, ottoman and large screen TV take up most of the living room. Same with the bedroom, there is no space to move around the bed and that office chair. I am glad I can say that I never had to live in a shoebox like this even in college. The first home I purchased was 3200 sq
“like my building’s ban on eating or conducting business on the circular tables w/ 4 chairs each in 2 of the corners”
Are poker tournaments considered “business”?
Lesson plainly laid out about how NOT to furnish a shoe box sized apartment. That hideous couch, ottoman and TV belong in a room the size of this entire apartment. Same for the bedroom, there is absolutely no space to move around with that big bed (note the wrong sized comforter) with the desk/chair there. Scale people, scale…make it work!
I do have to say though, I am surprised at the lack of positive comments from our resident renters who *itch and whine about not being able to find an affordable place to buy in the city.
Drink it up folks, this is what $199,000 will buy in that area…and don’t make predictions that it will sell for $149,000 in a few months. I assume this is the home of a recent grad who is planning on moving up in the world (LP or RN) and that price is what it would take to be able to walk away breaking even.
Oh yeah, really, that pipe does make the place doesn’t it? Goes along with the furnishings…
OOPPPSSS when are we going to get an edit button? thought my first smart ass post was deleted so I rephrased the second one.
Strange how a few minutes spent contemplating your initial views changes your opinion…
westloopelo:
Some people value space. Some people value convenience(I’m one of them). I would much rather buy a smaller place where I can walk home in 10 minutes from work.
You can always make more money, you cant always make more time. /shrug
“and that price is what it would take to be able to walk away breaking even.”
Pure speculation, as usual.
“Pure speculation, as usual.”
Duuuuude. Hypocrisy, too? You’re going for the superfects today, aren’t you.
That said:
“The first home I purchased was 3200 sq”
Yeah, and with your G’parents owning 8-figures worth of Manhattan co-ops, we’re all very impressed that you managed to buy a big house somewhere. We get it, WL, you’re a much more worthy person than most of us hoi polloi/proles/peons/whathaveyou.
This thread is as charming as the featured apartment with the view of the neighboring building and the uninsulated, joyous sound of 20 floors of laundry water rushing thru the PVC.
Why on earth would a single person have their first house at 3200sqft? That just boggles the mind. I hope you could afford a cleaning lady because my wife and I are having issues just keeping our place that’s a third of the size clean all the time.
And I agree with anon here: I love being so close to work and not having to commute and having the option to walk home in 15 minutes if I want!
“Some people value space. Some people value convenience(I’m one of them). I would much rather buy a smaller place where I can walk home in 10 minutes from work.
You can always make more money, you cant always make more time. /shrug”
I, too, value location over massive or even not so massiv, just too much square footage. You’ve got to see a unit to see how it is to live in, but 200,000 sounds reasonable to me. People, what say you?
Some real estate agents need lessons on staging a place for photographs.
For starters, if you don’t do another things, pleeeeeeeeease close the lid to the toilet!!
Then, clean off the kitchen countertops and take the 15,000 magnets off the refrigerator and the mags off the coffee table.
This unit isn’t the worst I ever saw by any means. I have seen photos of places with wrinkled shirts hanging on the backs of chairs, shoes under the coffee table, and always kitchen counters and refrigerator tops (and every other horizontal surface) cluttered with small appliances and cereal boxes and cheap bric-a-brac and junk mail and every other form of unsightly clutter.
The listing agent gets paid something when the place sells no matter what, and s/he owes it to the seller/client to at least stage the place decently for photos. The lack of professionalism among many agents is appalling.
westloopelo and a are correct about the rent equiv. A precursory search on craigslist shows 1/1s renting for about $1,500.
However, this begs the question of whether or not $1,500 a month is an appropriate rent for a 1bd. If there are too many one beds for rent in the neighborhood then rents will go down. Does that mean that the asking price should adjust accordingly? I don’t have the answer to this question but my gut tells me that there are too many rentals, too many for sale, and prices for both need to be adjusted accordingly.
Chances are this unit is rented out, and it’s much harder to get a tenant to clean up than it is for an owner.
I believe the 1 BR in that building were studios prior to the conversion (ditto for the 2BR that used to be 1 BRs). If I understand correctly, they turned a dining area into a BR. So this should be priced like a studio…
This is technically gold coast, but most people refer to it as streeterville. CTA bus stop right in front of the building. Location is awesome especially in summer: public park, field, tennis courts, playgrounds nearby. Michigan Ave, the beach, navy pier and Rush street are a close walk away.
I just bought a 2 bed right next to this building. Although my place needed cosmetic updates, if you were to use it and other 1 beds in my building as a comp. this is priced right. Central A/C and washer/dryer set it apart from some of the older buildings next door. Several other buildings, mainly the ones along the park with a lake view are easily 4-5 times more than this.
anon (tfo) I think your assumptions are as little value added about me as they are about westloopelo. I can sense the seething jealously seeping through. Haha sorry punk you’ll never be as rich as him. Life sucks doesn’t it? LOL your jealousy is giving me entertainment value you jealous prick.
“Yeah, and with your G’parents owning 8-figures worth of Manhattan co-ops, ”
Sure, westloopelo is annoying at times. But I’ve never been class jealous of him nor will I ever be. We’ll probably never hang out given our differences. But I can tell someone finally hit a nerve with you anon(tfo).
The first and only house I plan to buy is around 3,600sf. My timeframe is around five years from now.
Sonies in response to you:
“Why on earth would a single person have their first house at 3200sqft?”
1) Maybe they are still technically single but still seeing someone.
2) Love the place.
3) Know they will live there for life.
4) Want to minimize transaction costs to the RE industry.
Seriously you people who “trade up” every few years have your heads so far up your ass its humorous. No I’ve never lived in a 3,000+ sf place. But if I had the means to do so I surely would.
And I would laugh publicly, and on the interwebs, at obviously jealous people like anon(tfo) and all the other status class conscious idiots. In fact I would throw parties with my friends and laugh at you F-tards.
Bob-out.
Just an add on to my post about my first home. I didn’t reveal the fact that it had virtually no windows, no interior doors, flooring in the bathrooms had rotted through to the crawl space below, it needed an entire build over of the roof and there was essentially no kitchen. From the info I gathered from the neighbors, the parents died suddenly and left the house (then in great shape) to their three teen/college age kids who partied the entire house into a real hell hole.
I purchased it for $50,000…basically just enough for the kids to pay off the taxes that had accumulated over a few years. After a bit more than one year of weekend work and over $200,000 worth of materials, I had a beautiful home. I sold it 8 years later to my nephew and his wife who still live there.
Believe me, even though my parents/grands have a ton of $$$ I do not rely on them in my dealings at all.
“Seriously you people who “trade up” every few years have your heads so far up your ass its humorous.”
And why is that? I don’t plan to “trade up” for at least 7-10 years. And when I do, it will be my last “trade up”. And hopefully in 10 years i’ll have a decent portion of equity in my home to use as a nice fat down payment (along with all the other cash i’m saving by purchasing) to own a place that is 2-3000sqft and not in a marginal southside neighborhood.
Also I think you’ll be in shock from moving from a studio to a 3000sqft place. Your heating/electricity bills will be about 10x what they are now. The maintenance will be 10x what you have to do now, the costs to furnish such a place will be astronomical, and my god I can’t imagine keeping a house that big clean all the time. (especially after throwing parties all the time! hah!)
a, I was not commenting negatively on the space vs convenience topic at all. I too lean more towards the convenience part of the equation.
Re: the space issue, I would be comfortable in a small place like this myself IF it were set up right. Most of the time while settling in a new city or area I do pick up or rent a studio myself. Doing the obvious, such as a wall mounted TV, maybe love seats or a grouping of smaller chairs, a bench seat that would slide under the desk, a smaller/murphy style or a nice futon type bed…the possibilities are endless for maximizing space and still being comfortable…and it can be done on a tight budget.
On another note, I need to say that I am not here to post about my riches (LOL) at all, but rather to give a point of view from a renovator’s perspective.
I have spent my entire life doing what I do in large part because my entire family is in some way involved with Real Estate…this is what I grew up with. Thanks to some great advice and leadership growing up, I have been, THANKFULLY, very successful at it. There were plenty of slip ups, wrong decisions made and a ton of money wasted because of some choices. But in the end, I have been very fortunate to have had a chance to do what I love and to have had the added bonus of being able to make a very lucrative living doing so.
So please, do not say I think I am above anyone else here as that is just not the case…and BTW Bob, I think I would like to ‘hang’ with you. Sure we have a different outlook on many things, but isn’t that what makes a good conversation? and oh yeah, been looking for some of those $1 canned beers…
Good points Sonies.
On the furniture situation that doesn’t apply to me. I’ve got relatives who always ask when they can dump their furniture in storage on me. On the heating/ac issue that can be mitigated quite a bit by a PV array (currently Illinois refunds 65% of the cost) and they are dropping in price every year. On the cleaning and maintenance aspect: definitely points I need to consider. I have a lot of time to think about it at least 😀
Seems well-priced to me. It’s a decent unit at a low price in a desireable area. You never get everything you want in your first home after all. I predict it will close within 2 months.
” I need to say that I am not here to post about my riches (LOL)”
Anyone should be able to ascertain that; I appreciate your perspective as a re-habber and new Chicagoan. Don’t take my needling the wrong way.
BTW, Bob, notwithstanding your vitriol, I realized that I misread your “pure speculation” as a comment on WL’s comment as opposed to comment on the owner of the unit. Sorry I offended your delicate sensibilities; clearly I don’t belong in your strata of society, either. Color me green, dude.
anon,
Haha its okay. Take anything I post in the after hours with a grain of salt. Bob is hulk and lost the final round in flippy cup. No cheap prizes for Bob make him angry.
Missed the time of your post. I’ll buy you an Schlitz next time I’m at Miska’s.
Shall we all just ‘hug it out’ and call it a day? Bob, anon, HD what do ya say?
Yes, bitches, let’s hug it out.
I’ve seen units in this building. They are very, very tight. In particular, the living area seemed especially tight. The models did not have normal sized furniture, but had furniture with minimal dimensions. The ceilings were low and I did not think the plans for the lobby were an improvement. In addition, all the best units seems to be bought up in block, probably for resale later. I do not recall the PSF, but it seemed high and comparable to new units.
The location is wonderful and the views on units facing south were excellent.
If you are looking for some deals in this general area for one bedrooms, look at 10 E. Ontario. I know this is an American Invesco Building, but there is some real blood in the hallways going on here (I am currently renting in the building).
Check this one out: one bedroom, one bath. Sq feet -1093 (but deduct 150 because they are including the balcony sq ft in this number). Top floor (51) facing west. Relisted today-169K. I don’t know if this includes parking or not. Parking was being sold for 42 k a few years ago.
http://www.redfin.com/search#lat=41.893622&listing_id=3463560&long=-87.627423&market=chicago&status=1&v=4&zoomLevel=17
I have been renting here for a few years (saving money for a SFH) and didn’t fall for the American Investco scam. This unit must have sold for well over 400k in 05-06. Don’t think the owner has been around for awhile.
I heard a realtor in the hall telling her client that “units are going for half price now and it will take 10 years to get back what they paid for them”. Don’t know if this is true, but that is what I heard.
““units are going for half price now and it will take 10 years to get back what they paid for them””
Half of it is likely true. It will take much more than 10 years for the prices to return, at least in real terms. Even in nominla terms, unless there is high inflation, it will take closer to 20 years rather than 10, for the prices to double.
rachel and dd above, are right. these units did used to be one bedroom smaller, and they are tight because of that. esp the 1 and 2 bedrooms. This was a very well run rental building for many years and the units were spacious for their size. When it was converted the developer took the dining area in the 1 and 2 beds and made them into 2 and 3 beds respectively. likewise a wall was added and the studios became 1 beds. voila! its a simple addition of a wall with no extra sf, which is why they feel tight. Individuals have been doing these kind of conversions all over but esp in Sandburg village – which has similar plans in most buildings. when comparing this unit to other in the are you need to compare it to other large studios.
anon(tfo) that’s the first time i’ve ever seen you articulate firm predictions for bubble properties.
“anon (tfo) on May 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
““units are going for half price now and it will take 10 years to get back what they paid for them””
Half of it is likely true. It will take much more than 10 years for the prices to return, at least in real terms. Even in nominla terms, unless there is high inflation, it will take closer to 20 years rather than 10, for the prices to double.
“anon(tfo) that’s the first time i’ve ever seen you articulate firm predictions for bubble properties.”
Well, it’s defintely true that 10 E Ontario units are selling for 50% less than Invsco sold them for. And they aren’t flying off the MLS, so it seems 50% off is about fair value. For them to double in 10 years (ie go from .50 back to 1.0), you need 7% annual growth; for it to happen in 20, you need 3.5%/year.
So I’m making a very broad prediction that kinda crappy condos in/near River North will experience nominal price growth of less than double historical average. If there were money to be made in such non-predictions, we’d all be rich.