Fannie Mae Lists For $10K More Than 2003 On This 3-Bedroom Townhouse: 642 W. Armour in West Town
This 3-bedroom townhouse at 642 W. Armour in West Town recently came on the market.
It is a Fannie Mae Homepath property and can be purchased for just 3% down.
It has 2 bedrooms on the second floor and a 3rd bedroom on the top floor.
The kitchen looks intact with white cabinets but the appliances are missing.
It also appears from the listing pictures that the bathrooms are intact.
There are hardwood floors in the living room.
The listing says there’s no central air. But there is an attached 1-car garage.
Fannie Mae has listed this for $9900 more than the 2003 list price.
Will it get the premium?
Ayoub Rabah at Great Street Properties has the listing. See the pictures here.
642 W. Armour: 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, listing says 1120 square feet, one attached garage
- Sold in May 1996 for $198,000
- Sold in September 2003 for $365,000
- Lis pendens foreclosure filed in June 2011
- Fannie Mae Homepath property
- Currently listed for $374,900
- Taxes of $4488
- No central air (?)
- Bedroom #1: 17×13 (second floor)
- Bedroom #2: 14×12 (second floor)
- Bedroom #3: 14×10 (third floor)
If the no a/c thing is correct, then someone stole the compressor (or just the copper). If that’s the case, I’d be quite concerned about other non-obviois issues.
Those 20yo wood floors look like they are 100, not to mention 1120sqft would be small for a 2 bed. This place needs at least $20-30k of work and this property is probably worth $375k post renovation. In order for this to make sense it needs to sell at $300-325k.
I would like to share a passage from “Sister Carrie” I read on the subway this morning which describes this very neighborhood during the Gilded Age. Carrie lived with Drouet just a few blocks south of the home in this profile, by Ashland and Ogden overlooking Union Park.
She was constantly pained by the sight of the white-faced, ragged men who slopped desperately by her in a sort of wretched mental stupor. The poorly clad girls who went blowing by her window evenings, hurrying home from some of the shops of the West Side, she pitied from the depths of her heart. She would stand and bite her lips as they passed, shaking her little head and wondering. They had so little, she thought. It was so sad to be ragged and poor. The hang of faded clothes pained her eyes.
“And they have to work so hard!” was her only comment. On the street sometimes she would see men working – Irishmen with picks, coal-heavers with great loads to shovel, Americans busy about some work which was a mere matter of strength – and they touched her fancy. Toil, now that she was free of it, seemed even a more desolate thing than when she was part of it. She saw it through the mist of fancy – a pale, somber half-light, which was the essence of poetic feeling. Her old father in his flour-dusted miller’s suit, sometimes returned to her in memory, revived by a face in a window. A shoemaker pegging at his last, a blastman seen through a narrow window in some basement where iron was being melted, a bench-worker seen high aloft in some window, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up; these took her back in fancy to the details of the mill. She felt, though she seldom expressed then, sad thoughts upon this score. her sympathies were ever with that under-world of toil from which she had so recently sprung, and which she best understood.
Ewwwww to the toilet with urine in it!!!
Also, I wouldn’t consider this a deal since in 2003, this place was probably in good shape.
GROSSSSSSSS!
I’m not sure how much of that listing you can trust. It also says “No pets” which I think is incorrect — I walk by that building often and am pretty sure a few people have dogs.
That said, that seems steep for a foreclosure that needs significant work.
$335 a sqft for this place in this condition? LOL yeah right
On properties in this condition, I would think the $100 it would cost to bring in Merry Maids would have far greater return than any other marketing you could do.
Face amount of the two mortgages was only about $300k.
Of course, the first LP was filed in July 2007, so presumably the acccrued total was much higher.
Price seems a bit high for the condition of the property. However, being a homepath renovation property it could be a good opportunity for someone to get a cheap construction loan to have the place fixed up.
This doesn’t even look like it’d be worth 300k. I’d say 275k, with the amount of work that has to go in to it.
You’re kind of making my point here. What does this unit mean for the rest of the real estate market? That’s in in trouble? Do full junkyards mean the new car market is screwed? No, if anything, a unit like this lowers the supply and increases the price for the “regular” market. If units like this are 1% or 50% of the market, it doesn’t matter that much for the places that aren’t trashed, all it means is that some fool threw a bunch of mostly other people’s money away and is a deadbeat, we’re all paying the price for it and it’s an important reset on the way that we view real estate from a macroeconomic perspective is fatally flawed. We’ve based everything we do from a macroeconomic perspective on the assumption that real estate will always appreciate.
Milkster, this is actually my favorite image about the west side from Sister Carrie – blocks laid out ready for houses to be built, with sewers and streetlamps in place:
“Great industries were moving in. The huge railroad corporations which had long before recognised the prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of land for transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had been extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth. The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regions where, perhaps, one solitary house stood out alone—a pioneer of the populous ways to be. There were regions open to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventually ending on the open prairie.
“If units like this are 1% or 50% of the market, it doesn’t matter that much for the places that aren’t trashed, all it means is that some fool threw a bunch of mostly other people’s money away and is a deadbeat, we’re all paying the price for it and it’s an important reset on the way that we view real estate from a macroeconomic perspective is fatally flawed.”
You’re wrong JJJ. This IS the comp for the neighborhood now. The kitchen and baths are intact. There’s no reason to pay another $100k for a similar townhouse on the street. This is what buyers want. They want the deals OR they want it totally renovated and beautiful. That’s why the deals are such a big portion of the sales now.
You’re getting your talking points mixed up. What’s this one, “new” or a deal at $350/sq ft? Missing appliances mean this place is not intact. No regular buyer is buying this place within 30% of list. Not because of the state of the market, because this place sucks.
“No regular buyer is buying this place within 30% of list. Not because of the state of the market, because this place sucks.”
This is the deal (only it’s not really cheap enough so it will sit there until it sells for much less. But the bank will figure it out.)
If this place sucks, what do you think all the other townhouses on the same street are like? All you have to do is put in some appliances, sand the floors, paint it and it looks just like the others. There’s only so much you can do with these kinds of properties- which are like 75% of the other properties in the GZ. Very little is truly “unique.”
So this will be a comp for the whole block. That’s the point. The bank doesn’t really care if it ultimately sells it for $250,000. It just wants to sell it. But the next door neighbor who paid $400k in 2007 is now screwed.
“So this will be a comp for the whole block. That’s the point.”
At what point does this logic break down? If I won the lottery tomorrow and sold my condo for $1, is that now a comp for the condo next door? No, its an anomaly due to extenuating circumstances. Is “trashed foreclosure” not an extenuating circumstance?
What about a flip? If a developer buys this place for $250k, renovates it and places it back on the market, isn’t its own prior sale then a comp?
That place is ridiculously overpriced. I live two blocks away from it. I’d say in good condition its worth 300K at best. Comp that to the place I just bought down the street. I have 800 extra square feet, and extra bedroom, a much nicer kitchen and far, far better condition. And I paid 70K less than they are asking. In its current condition, I wouldn’t spend more than 275K.
http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1633-W-Huron-St-60622/unit-1F/home/12697920
“This is the deal (only it’s not really cheap enough so it will sit there until it sells for much less. But the bank will figure it out.)”
You are severely overestimating the efficiency and commodification of the real estate market.
“No, its an anomaly due to extenuating circumstances. Is “trashed foreclosure” not an extenuating circumstance?”
I agree with you- that if this was the only foreclosure on this block in the last year, then fine. It would be an outlier. But it’s NOT! 30% to 40% of ALL SALES are distress properties. They ARE the market. I don’t have the time to check, but I’m sure if I looked at the other properties on this block (in these townhouses and the ones across the street) I would find at least one (probably more) in distress. But I don’t feel like looking.
This is what I tell people about any building/complex they are buying in. Buying a foreclosure or short sale in a 20 unit building? Go look at the records of ALL the other units. Odds are several will be in similar shape and will come on the market in the next months (years.)
“30% to 40% of ALL SALES are distress properties. They ARE the market.”
Why aren’t the 60-70% of sales that are not distressed the market? For every distressed sale there are 2 non-distressed sales.
This place is so poorly constructed and poorly maintained you would think it were a housing project. I suspect the only difference is the quality of your neighbor.
It’s a faceless cinder-block facade, the epitome of the cheapest construction you can find, and now years later it shows why, both in appearance and desirability in this buyer’s market.
This is another fantastic example of why brick facades are not the same as cinder blocks in terms of actual function (not even talking about aesthetic). Unless they used reclaimed hardwood floors, I would wonder what kind of water damage took place. How much mold is under the drywall on the other side of the poorly maintained facade that’s *clearly* leaking in? You can see in the one picture that the parapet wall is leaking and not at all sealed properly, the whole place is probably wet inside and while normally that may not even be obvious by appearance, this one is completely obvious. Additionally, there are at least two walls pictured where there’s obvious marks that the walls are leaking, probably the height of the whole building. No amount of rehab is going to change construction that’s so fundamentally flawed.