After 21-Months, Lakeview 2-Flat Reduces $10K: 1524 W. Byron
We’ve chattered about this 2-flat at 1524 W. Byron in Lakeview several times in the last 2 years.
Much of the chatter was about what price makes sense for a buyer who wants to be a landlord.
See our January 2010 chatter here.
In that time, it appears that the rents have actually been falling on the units.
One of the units is listed on Craiglist as being reduced from $1200 a month to $995 a month.
See the Craigslist ad for the rental here.
The two units consist of:
- Unit #1: 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, was rented for $1200 a month- now asking $995 a month?
- Unit #2: 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, rented for $1195 a month
There is no parking. The listing says the building is “land locked.”
There is central air and laundry in the basement.
Greg Viti at Koenig & Strey still has the listing. See the pictures here.
1524 W. Byron: 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, no parking
- Sold in 1995 for $209,000
- Was listed in July 2008 for $499,900
- Withdrawn
- Was listed in January 2010 for $499,900
- Reduced
- Currently listed for $489,000
- Taxes of $9452
- Separate central air/heat
- No parking
still waiting for the right buyer to stumble out of diner grill and snap this place up
Wow, landlocked and priced so that I can never make a dime off it sign me up!
I do swoon when I see places like this. Love these buildings. I just want the ask to be like 150K with nobody bidding.
Ah well, off to play the lottery!
Priced way to high reminds me of this somewhat similar multifamily that had higher rents and only sold after significant price reductions. http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/2142-W-Irving-Park-Rd-60618/home/13389742
Does “landlocked” mean that the property does not touch an alley?
The interior photos looked nice. I wonder how they got the tenants to clean and decorate appropriately.
Uh, WOW, but $995 a month seems very cheap for a place like this even if you do not consider that it does not include heat. I have a friend with a two flat in Andersonville that is vastly inferior to this, and he is trying to get $1200 a unit for flats that look like slums compared to this. This is LAKEVIEW, after all, not Rogers Park or Edgewater. Maybe I will move back there, if this pricing trend continues, and rentals this cheap in this prime neighborhood argue for further drops in more marginal areas such as these other two neighborhoods.
The drop in rents will cause further drops in sales prices. Prices follow fundamentals like rents and incomes in the area. The 160Xrent figure applies here- figure about $1000 per unit rental, or $2000 total rent and you get $360,000. And that’s using the highest multiplier. Some prospective landlords, mindful of future confiscatory property taxes, might want to use 120X or 140X rents.
“Uh, WOW, but $995 a month seems very cheap for a place like this even if you do not consider that it does not include heat. I have a friend with a two flat in Andersonville that is vastly inferior to this, and he is trying to get $1200 a unit for flats that look like slums compared to this. This is LAKEVIEW, after all, not Rogers Park or Edgewater. ”
there must be some hidden flaw, like maybe it’s poorly insulated and the HVAC is highly inefficient, so the heating costs are so high no one will pay more for rent with heating on top of it? The $995 rent sure is suspicious, or they’re just desperate to get it rented.
Count me in the “I’m amazed at the rent” camp. My sister rents a crappy two-bedroom in Uptown for $900.
I wonder if it’s really hard to rent when a property is for sale. I know that when I was a renter, I wouldn’t even have considered it, given that the lease could end without much notice, and I’d be stuck with the hassles of looking for another place and moving.
Laura, I agree. But my friends in the rental market are saying it’s pretty dead out there. Apartments have been on the market for months and there have been reductions etc. Some landlords are still giving away 2 months free and no security deposit just to get people in the higher priced rentals.
So- maybe they just couldn’t rent it for $1200 and had to reduce to get someone in there.
still love the swanky back yard
I am not surprised its not getting any rent. You have to pay your own heat, and its basically on Ashland and next to a run down auto garage. There is no parking at the unit, and parking around there stinks. You arent close to any good amenities (grocery store ect) to walk to other then the Long Room and it looks tiny
“You arent close to any good amenities (grocery store ect) to walk to other then the Long Room and it looks tiny”
Diner/Dinner Grill.
Trader Joe’s is 3 blocks; Whole Foods is 6 blocks. Brown line is also three (and a half, maybe) blocks. Music Box is also 3+ blocks. And, as noted, you can get your beater car serviced directly outside your front door.
El Gato Negro closed, tho, so that’s one potential renter segment flushed.
“El Gato Negro closed, tho, so that’s one potential renter segment flushed”
wait is that the place on irving and ashland (a block east)?
that place was fun sad that its gone 🙁
“wait is that the place on irving and ashland (a block east)? ”
Yeppers.
you know why it closed? when i would go (years back) it would always be packed.
“you know why it closed? when i would go (years back) it would always be packed.”
Nope. I’d guess at either onerous lease renewal terms (most likely) or loss of license, tho I never saw a license revocation posted.
“tho I never saw a license revocation posted”
they had a good ID policy when i would go so i dont think license would get taken, maybe lease argument and owner said F it. that happend to my favorite club in the late 90’s early 00’s, club 720, the lease jumped like 40% when t was up and the owner after a heated argument said f this and shut down.
El Gato Negro probably closed because of the rapacity of the commercial landlord, the lowest species of crawling scum. These people are forever killing their golden geese by exploiting the sudden success of neighborhoods that would never have succeeded without the interesting businesses that come for the low rents.
The process repeats itself every time a neighborhood becomes a “hot” retail or entertainment district. Exciting new businesses run by imaginative people with little capital come into a neglected or semi-blighted area to take advantage of the charming spaces at super low rents.
And they create a really exciting, interesting, attractive neighborhood in the process. That lures young people with good paychecks, and then older professionals. Rents rise, apartments and houses get rehabilitated and you suddenly have a really hot area.
Then the commercial leases start coming up for renewal and the greedy landlords, figuring their commercial tenants are trapped by the difficulty and business disruption entailed in moving, triple their rents. Many of the best businesses cannot or do not want to pay, since their profits will be decimated. They move en masse and there are suddenly empty spaces all over the place, and chain retail moves in and turns it into another ho-hum area. Or worse, the places just sit vacant.
I saw this happen in Lakeview and Lincoln Park twenty years ago. It looks to be happening in Wicker Park now- all the great little galleries that made that such a happening neighborhood are mostly gone, driven out by the rent hikes. The retail district around Clark, Broadway & Diversey clear up to Belmont and over to Halstead is a shadow of what it was in 1988. I remember when a number of people in the building at Broadway & Surf got their rent tripled, and two moved to Evanston. The spaces sat empty for three years, and the landlord would not drop the rents.
“be happening in Wicker Park now- all the great little galleries that made that such a happening neighborhood are mostly gone, driven out by the rent hikes. The retail district around Clark, Broadway & Diversey clear up to Belmont and over to Halstead is a shadow of what it was in 1988. I remember when a number of people in the building at Broadway & Surf got their rent tripled, and two moved to Evanston. The spaces sat empty for three years, and the landlord would not drop the rents.”
Based on my non-scientific survey conducted by walking up and down Southport with some frequency, it looks like this is happening here. There have been a number of stores close in the last 2 years with a large percentage of the spaces remaining vacant for extended periods of time.
“There have been a number of stores close in the last 2 years with a large percentage of the spaces remaining vacant for extended periods of time.”
um yeah, its called a recession…
I have a friend who had a store on Southport she closed in 2004 for lack of business, and a number of other boutiques on that strip followed her out of the nabe in the next year, well before the recession struck. Ridiculous rents and altogether the wrong demographic for trendy boutiques were the killing factors.
The demographics only LOOK good on paper. You hear of incomes above $100K and high rents and housing prices, but when you get there, you find out that the market for $800 evening gowns and trendy little dresses is nonexistent, because all the women over there are young mothers with big mortgages, and they and their husbands are a lot more interested in funding their 401K and college savings accounts then they are in being trendy. “EVERY WOMAN I SEE IS PUSHING A DOUBLE BABY STROLLER!!!!!! wailed my friend after 3 months there.
A block or two makes a huge diff. The area close to the el was much “hotter” than the area by the Music Box, for some reason, maybe more singles by the tracks.
10/22/2010 checkin:
It’s funny because lately on the MLS in Lakeview it’s the two-flats taking the steepest haircuts.
3519 N Ravenswood for 390k.
3520 N Lincoln for 400k.
1134 W Addison for 439k.
3851 N Hermitage for 440k.
3112 N Southport for 450k.
903 W Addison for 464.5k.
How are these tales of aspiring two-flat owners in the GZ shaping up? Is it as svelte and awesome as it seemed?
$449,000