Renovated 3-Bedroom Co-op Reduces $158,000 at 70 E. Cedar in the Gold Coast
This 3-bedroom in 70 E. Cedar in the Gold Coast came on the market in September 2020.
According to Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury by Neil Harris, 70 E. Cedar was originally part of the Potter Palmer estate in 1926.
At 18 stories, it has a 3-story limestone Italian Renaissance base, with keystones, scrolls and rustication. The building has 4 penthouse duplexes above the 13th floor, some of which have terraces.
It was built as a co-op.
There are 2 units per floor. It has a doorman, on-site engineer and an attached garage, which apparently has a waitlist (according to other listings in the building).
This unit was “just renovated” by Jean Atchison, a nationally recognized interior designer.
It retained some of its vintage features including moldings, crown molding and a wood burning fireplace in the living room.
The dining room has been converted into a family room with a built-in storage.
The listing says there is an “all new gourmet kitchen” with white cabinets and Monogram appliances that includes a glass door integrated refriegerator/freezer, a 5 in 1 oven, a slide-in stove with oven and warming drawer.
It has a quartz island, a deep Franke sink, and a custom banquette with a matching quartz top.
It also has 2 pantries and a Butler’s station.
The powder room holds the washer dryer.
2 of the bedrooms are en suite, including the primary bedroom.
It has space pac cooling.
The building has additional storage and a shared deck.
The listing says 70% financing is allowed with a 30-day board approval.
The monthly assessment is busted out as the following:
Breakdown $2,318.00 Monthly assessment – $1,241,27 Tax $166.87 Reserve contribution $500.82 Capital Improvement (Owner will Pay in Full) $59.87 Electric
However, Unit 8W, which has 135 shares (10W has 139 shares) of the co-op is paying this in their assessment:
8W has 135 of the 4250 shares. Assessment breakdown: Monthly Assessment: $2,251.88, RE Tax: $1,205.55, Reserve Assessment: $162.07, Capital Projects Assessment: $486.41, 7 year term loan: $294.44, Electric: $52.14.
Originally listed in September 2020 at $790,000, it has been reduced $158,000 to $648,000.
According to Zillow and Redfin, it last sold in 2014 for $780,000, so it is listed $148,000 below the last sales price.
At 2400 square feet, is this a deal?
Karen Peterson at @Properties has the listing. See the pictures here.
Unit #10W: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2400 square feet, co-op
- Sold in April 2014 for $780,000 (according to Redfin and Zillow)
- Originally listed in September 2020 for $790,000
- Reduced
- Currently listed at $648,000
- Assessments are $2544 a month (but maybe more? #8W’s assessment is $4452)
- Taxes are included in assessments
- Space pac
- Washer/dryer in the unit
- Attached garage parking but there may be a waitlist?
- Wood burning fireplace
- Bedroom #1: 12×18
- Bedroom #2: 18×12
- Bedroom #3: 11×10
- Living room: 26×15
- Family room (formerly dining room): 17×15
- Kitchen: 13×13
- Laundry: 5×6
Listing says, ” Breakdown $2,318.00 Monthly assessment – $1,241,27 Tax $166.87 Reserve contribution $500.82 Capital Improvement (Owner will Pay in Full) $59.87 Electric” 2318+1241.27+166.87+500.82+59.87 = 4286.83 or about the same as 8W
Maths was never a strong suit
All 3BR are Ensuite. Weird on the 3D tour and ad, no picks of the 3rd BR.
Over all this isnt a bad place, however its got 1 foot in vintage and 1 in “modern” and to me it just doesnt work as a complete package. Converting the 3rd BR into a DR and opening it to the FR would have been a good call.
Access to the bathroom means going thru a BR and no DR are serious knocks at $7k/mo
I don’t know how people can stand to live someplace where the views are so ugly. I don’t want to look out of my windows and see ugliness from every room. Closing the shutters is even more depressing. RedFin estimates the monthly cost at $8,000. There are so many better places one can find for that price.
“no picks of the 3rd BR.”
Given that the bath is the laundry room, I’d guess it’s used for storage, in general, and was jam packed for the photo shoot.
“I don’t know how people can stand to live someplace where the views are so ugly”
I agree and not all “city views” are equal. If I’m paying top dollar for an apartment downtown I would expect a pleasant to awesome view.
Nice vintage unit, great building, perfect location.
If HOA is really $2,500 including taxes and parking, this looks like an excellent deal. I’d have to know more about the parking situation though and the special assessment. I wonder how long that goes and is the current owner really paying all of it. What other issues does the building have?
This is a beautiful apartment in perfect condition, and it’s beautifully staged as well- I’m so glad the decorator kept all the lovely millwork on the walls intact, instead of “clean-walling” the place into blandness.
But the total monthly fixed cost, before any mortgage payment, is likely closer to $4,200 than $2,500, unless some of the other assessments, such as the 7 year loan for capital improvements and the reserve assessment, are already paid in. This building is just a tremendously expensive building to operate and maintain, as are so many other fine old pre-war high rise buildings in that area, so you really have to have very deep pockets and really love this place to buy into it, never mind put up with a coop association. It’s no surprise that it is losing value over time, for that is happening with many of these decorative but high-maintenance pre-war buildings in every price bracket right now. Don’t count on appreciation. Unlike the 80s and 90s, when there were far fewer choice condos available in the downtown neighborhoods, buyers now have many more beautiful, high-amenity high rise condos to choose from, with much lower maintenance costs, and younger buyers in especial won’t put up with either a co-op association, or the sky-high maintenance costs of 90-year-old buildings unless they can buy in very cheaply.
I agree with your great assessment, Laura. But then what happens to these old buildings when the current owners die off and people like me, at age 50, don’t want or have the wherewithal to pay $5,000 a month for HOA?
There are dozens if not hundreds of such high-rise residential buildings in Chicago, all turning 100 years old in the next decade. I’m worried about their future. The city certainly doesn’t have the financial resources to help keep these buildings running if residents refuse to do so.
That’s what I’ve wondered for quite awhile, Dan- do these beautiful buildings have a future? Owners of beautiful old buildings need to find ways to reduce the costs in these buildings, but you can cut only so much. Even after you’ve laid off all your doormen, replaced old furnaces and windows, and reduced hours for your remaining staff.
Buildings comparable to this, that are located in less affluent neighborhoods are falling even faster and more drastically in value, such as some of Hyde Park’s more extravagant buildings. I’m tracking a few units at the Powhatan, a splendid building with its indoor pool and wonderful terra cotta embellishments. These are gigantic apartments with en suite baths that are almost as big as my living room, but have HOAs of $1.25 a square foot. That means a HOA of $5200 a month for a 4,000 sq ft apartment. But even I was pretty shocked at just how low these units are selling- one, with 3,000 sq ft or so, sold for $134K, and a 4 bed 4 bath unit, gorgeous and in good condition, is offered at $240K. One is being offered at over $500K, good luck with that. Why? Because the likely buyers, people like U of Chicago professors and the run of professionals don’t make the kind of money that the industrial chieftains and financiers who lived in this building back in the day make.
I’m even more worried for our high rise buildings, even our newer ones, when I consider the global outlook for energy and climate. High rises have always been expensive to operate and maintain, and if they aren’t maintained, they become not only miserable to live in, but dangerous as well, even if they don’t come near collapsing (which most never will). I love the look of Chicago’s skyline and I love old high rise buildings, but it could be that, in a future I hope I don’t live to see, that anything over 8 stories or so will be in every way obsolete, as some maintain.
“the Powhatan”
Like this one?
https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/4950-S-Chicago-Beach-Dr-60615/unit-3A/home/113726757
They did all that work, and took *out* the laundry (not that it could stay where it was)?
“That’s what I’ve wondered for quite awhile, Dan- do these beautiful buildings have a future? Owners of beautiful old buildings need to find ways to reduce the costs in these buildings, but you can cut only so much.”
Maintaining the old exterior costs money. The fewer units there are, the fewer people to pay.
My recommendation is to buy in high rises with a lot of units so that many people absorb the costs.
These 29 unit co-ops and condo buildings were built for the rich. They are still mostly for the rich. I can’t even fathom how expensive it is to split the cost of 24/7 doormen with just 29 units.
Didn’t one of the Kenwood co-ops go condo during the housing bust specifically to save itself from the really large assessments? I thought it did. I know I covered it on this blog but I can’t remember which one it was.
“I can’t even fathom how expensive it is to split the cost of 24/7 doormen with just 29 units.”
It’s about 4.5 FTEs. Call it 5 to cover sick days, etc. There’s a doorman union in Chicago, and the minimum wage is going up to $18.35 /hr this year. Call it $20 with employer-side FICA, etc. $1000/ee/mo for health care; $.80/hr for 401k, misc other stuff. See: http://aboma.com/Site/pdfs/aboma-booklet-2019-2022%20doorstaff-agreement.pdf
Say you want to premium pay them a bit bc you don’t want too much turnover. Call it $30/hr*8760*1.1 (sick, etc) + 60k for healthcare ~ $350k, or ~$1k/month/unit, before holiday tipping.
So nearly half of the regular monthly assessment here, and that’s just for a single 24/7 doorman, no engineer, etc.
“Didn’t one of the Kenwood co-ops go condo during the housing bust”
5000 east end. https://cribchatter.com/?p=10821 The featured unit closed at $200k in May-12.
“My recommendation is to buy in high rises with a lot of units so that many people absorb the costs. ”
———————————-
Why not buy condos — or gasp! — single family homes at prices where they can afford maintenance contracts?
That way they aren’t slaves to condo/co-op boards — or the shills trying to unload them.
“ So nearly half of the regular monthly assessment here, and that’s just for a single 24/7 doorman, no engineer, etc.”
Get rid of the doorman. Problem solved
“Why not buy condos — or gasp! — single family homes at prices where they can afford maintenance contracts?”
That’s my point johnc. That’s why I recommend that people buy in a high rise with a lot of units so that any maintenance costs of the big building are spread over more owners.
It just makes common sense for most people.
If you are rich, you don’t care that the Palmolive has less than 100 units. You can afford the maintenance. If you are not rich, and a big special assessment would be a burden, then living in the Hancock or other similarly large buildings, might be a better option for you.
But there’s no doubt that living in a high rise with many amenities like doormen, engineers, pools etc. costs. Same in rentals. If you live in Optima in Streeterville, you pay more than a 4-story midrise in Lakeview.
“If you live in Optima in Streeterville, you pay more than a 4-story midrise in Lakeview”
… even if the finishes in the units are identical, and the lakeview unit is meaningfully larger.
That’s rare, of course, on the finishes, as the 4-story LV apartment building typically isn’t updated like/as-often-as a SV high rise apartment.
“… even if the finishes in the units are identical, and the lakeview unit is meaningfully larger.”
Optima has the amenities and you have to pay for them. It has an indoor basketball court, pool, yoga studio, free coffee in the lobby etc etc.
Sabrina, I think the Hyde Park- Kenwood building you are thinking of is 5000 S East End Ave, which converted from co-op to condo in 2011.
It sure as hell didn’t save them any money, but the affair illustrates the dangers of co-op ownership for anyone who isn’t rich. For one thing, the co-op to condo conversion process is especially knarly and expensive, according to Kovitz,Shifrin,& Nesbit, a local law firm specializing in coop and condo law.
Most of all,though, while the general ownership had to vote to approve the conversion, the coop board could, and did, levy a humdinger of a special assessment to catch up on decades of deferred maintenance, at the time of the conversion. I am guessing that that was necessary for the conversion, and subsequent sale of the units as separate properties, to be approved by the city, though I am not sure. The conversion and assessment took place in 2011, at which time condo and coop values were in the trough. The assessment was $8.5 million while the building was valued at only $6.7 million, with each unit assessed for anywhere from $63,000 to $150,000, amounts of money most of these middle class owners were unlikely to have on hand, and surely couldn’t get a loan to cover. I mean, try getting a loan to rehab your house, for more than its market value, especially at a time when millions of homes are in foreclosure and the lenders are begging for bailouts. And if you couldn’t come up with the cash within a couple of months? Just turn in your keys, which is what a number of owners had to do. Many had bought decades before, and lost their entire investment.
I track units in this building now, and it looks to me like the HOAs are almost as high as they’d be as cooperative units, as they don’t include the house taxes. What is better is that there is more transparency in the building’s governance, and owners have more control over their units, with the ability to sell without the buyer passing board approval, and greater say over the affairs of the building. The Board must now disclose the finances to the owners, and any maintenance issues the building may have. More transparency might have prevented the building from becoming such a maintenance disaster that millions of dollars were needed to bring it to code. But the place still costs as much to maintain as it did before, because this is just a very expensive building to maintain, and that’s all there is to it.
Here’s the Crain’s article:
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110510/CRED0701/110519997/hyde-park-residents-sue-over-co-op-s-conversion
Here’s a unit in a building that is just possibly the most outrageous maintenance costs of almost any cooperative building in the city, the Aquatania, at 5000 N Marine Drive. Lovely building that looks very stately when you roll past it on the drive, but $1.40 a square foot HOA for this middle income building with ordinary apartments and no special amenities but a dinghy fitness room, is exorbitant.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/5000-N-Marine-Dr-B11_Chicago_IL_60640_M70819-77587
“$1.40 a square foot HOA”
Seems the bigger units have slightly lower rates?
https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/5000-N-Marine-Dr-60640/unit-12A/home/22032978
Also seems that assessments include electric, which is kookoo.
Yes,anon, the larger units do usually have slightly lower rates per sq ft, because there is a “baseline” for things like the gas connection and the water lines. It’s the same thing in my building, and it only becomes questionable when the disparity is large, as it is in some buildings I’ve seen.
It would be helpful if HOA costs were itemized, so you can see just exactly what your unit is paying for, like so much per water tap or per radiator or gas connection. So far, though, I’ve never, ever seen a building that itemizes its HOA charges.