Get a 3/3 For Under $330,000 With Parking in Lakeview: 725 W. Sheridan
This top floor 3-bedroom at 725 W. Sheridan at Lakeview’s northern border came on the market in July 2011.
Since that time, it has been reduced $14,900 and is now listed at $325,000.
It is a rare condo listing at this price point because it has not only 3 bedrooms but also 3 full baths.
It appears from the public records that this was a 2/2 and a 1/1 that was combined into a 3/3 when the building was converted into condos in 1998.
The unit has all the amenities that buyers look for including central air, washer/dryer in the unit and deeded parking (in this case it is an outdoor spot for $5,000 extra.)
The unit also has a balcony.
The courtyard building was built in 1925, but unfortunately none of the vintage features have survived except for the massive bedroom sizes.
The kitchen has granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances.
The listing says there are concrete floors in between units and it also has a gas fireplace.
Is this a deal for the square footage and amenities?
Marcin Krempa at Re/Max Edge has the listing. See the pictures here.
Unit #706: 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, no square footage listed
- Sold in May 2000 for $184,000
- Sold in February 2002 for $294,000
- Originally listed in July 2011 for $339,900
- Reduced
- Currently listed for $325,000 (plus $5,000 for parking)
- Assessments of $691 a month (includes heat, gas)
- Taxes of $3847
- Central Air
- Washer/Dryer in the unit
- Bedroom #1: 17×12
- Bedroom #2: 17×12
- Bedroom #3: 15×11
Pretty good deal and taxes and assessment seem reasonable.
The bathrooms need work, but this seems like a lot of square footage for the price. For $2,300/mo you can have parking, a/c, w/d plus close access to the lake, El, buses and rest of Lakeview, with heat included. Many will scoff that it is inching towards Uptown, but I would definitely consider this if I needed/wanted this much space.
boi: “The bathrooms need work, but this seems like a lot of square footage for the price.”
My assessment of this place would hinge on whether that is true. If this was in the 2000+ sq. ft. range, it would seem to be a fantastic deal. Hard to tell from the pics and description, though.
Also: annoying, entitled white people aside, I’d rather have this place for 325K than that Kenwood place for 350K any day.
280-290, That park of Lakeview is pretty blah IMO.
“Hard to tell from the pics and description, though.”
Listed room sizes add up to 1223, so prolly not 2000+, but maybe close. But including a bike room pic and a parking lot pic, but no closet pix, makes me think the closets are small, which weighs against getting close to 2000.
Great lakefront access. If you’re a jogger or boater this area is nice.
ooh yes, right east of that crack house hotel and total shit block on broadway (one of the few still remaining) and also close to the craziest IHOP in town! Seriously, go there some time after 2am
total confirmation of my rule that nothing good ever happens after 2am
@TftinChi Your annoying unwarranted stereotyping, classism, politicism, racism and ignorance in this city puts you all back to circa. 1950 and makes Metro Detroit look harmonious. I’ve lived in both places.
After living here 5 years, I don’t see much difference in these “neighborhoods”. One isn’t that much different than the other, except for the fact there might be less shootings or stabbings in some of them.
Somebody just used that “entitled White people” thing on me because I’m renting a condo in this fancy Lakeview East (that wouldn’t sell) and wanted to be closer to work because I could no longer afford my car. He mentioned something about “being born and raised here and think they’re entitled”. I corrected him on the street. It wasn’t pretty. Although Mexican, he was “born and raised here” too, I reminded him. End of that friendship. Absolutely disgusting. Walmart will be occupying not one, but two, places in this fancy Lakeview.
“One isn’t that much different than the other, except for the fact there might be less shootings or stabbings in some of them.”
Do bullet calibers and blade lengths vary by neighborhood?
@Sconies: I was in that Ihop – ONCE! You’ve got a cop in there guarding the house (looks armed to me) and STILL let people high/drunk as hell wander in and…..CAUSE trouble. In Detroit, that would have been checked at the door. Seriously.
NoDifferent-
Don’t get your boxers/panties in a bunch. (S)he was mocking someone who used that language in a prior thread today:
http://cribchatter.com/?p=11380#comment-183821
NoDifferent: “@TftinChi Your annoying unwarranted stereotyping, classism, politicism, racism and ignorance in this city puts you all back to circa. 1950 and makes Metro Detroit look harmonious. I’ve lived in both places.”
Sorry, the “joke” of my comment might have been lost on you if you weren’t following the comment thread on the Kenwood property. Someone made a similar, though serious, reference to folks in LP/ELV being very bad people.
I, on the other hand, was not being at all serious. I live in LV and am an annoying, entitle white person. Nothing against anyone who wants to live in Kenwood. Honest.
I agree that this seems like a decent enough place, the bathrooms need some cosmetic overhauling but nothing major. The school lets it down, but then again a split bedroom floorplan probably isn’t going to appeal to too many families anyway. And it looks like the 3rd bedroom might be one of those annoying ‘so attached to the living area that you couldn’t really have someone sleep in it on a permanent basis’ type of bedrooms.
I predict this goes to a first time young single buyer planning to rent rooms to friends.
This is a nice place on a nice street at a fair price. It’s true that Broadway sucks over here, but you’re not far from more interesting parts, and I have always liked this stretch of Sheridan. You can walk to the lake and Wrigley, and there’s good public transportation right at your door. The place looks spacious and well-cared for, and I like the building (it actually looks a lot like the Marlborough).
I would live here, but it’s probably not the best place for kids unless you want to send them to Anshe Emet, which is very convenient but very expensive. I could see this being a good place for empty nesters who want to move back to the city.
Only real problem is the parking being outside, which is no picnic in the winter, especially if you’re older. Scraping ice off your windows is never fun.
This sure seems like a good deal to someone who ended up buying a 3/3 on the southside in 2006 because there wasn’t ANYTHING on the northside around this size around this price at the time. I didn’t pay this much, but for not too far less than this at that time, it was impossible to find a 3/2 in this shape even as far north as Rogers Park with a/c, laundry and parking.
Good thing both our commutes are better from the southside or I’d be crying in my margarita at the moment.
7 floors…but no mention of an elevator. thoughts?
But…but…this “bad” stretch of Broadway has a STARBUCKS! (Where a Woolworth’s used to be – “gentrification” in a nutshell/coffee bean.)
And the Hearty Boys restaurant/catering service, some interesting/quirky mom+pops, a well-regarded “storefront theatre,” a very popular bicycle shop and a computer store/Internet “cafe” (sorry, you’ll have to first buy your venti latte across the street).
Yes, there’s the problematic Chateau, but what I’m getting at here is that this particular block is one of the best examples of the “eclectic” nature of a typical city street, that I know of.
Oh yeah, and it’s easy walking distance to Wrigley.
How I remember this building as it looked in c 1990 or thereabouts, when this entire neighborhood was a slum… the cutoff for Lakeview was the 3800 N LSD condo, the beautiful vintage on the curve, then when you drove around it you went from being in a beautiful neighborhood to a very ragged one. This building had been a very run-down tenement. I saw the place as it was being renovated, when people were first starting to move back into this area.
This building never was a beautiful vintage, never had any pretty details. Around 1990, this area started to come up, and this building was purchased and rehabbed as a rental then. The neighborhood rehabbed quickly at that time as Lakeview pushed into it. It’s an attractive neighborhood that I’m very glad to see rescued. It’s truly astonishing how the area from 3800 N to 4400 N improved between 1990 and 1998, only eight years, after being a neglected dumping ground for some of the city’s worst social problems for so long.
Unit has a lot of space but this is just not a beautiful building. I think the seller should be grateful to get over $300K for it.
2 elevators in the building…one freight, one passenger
I don’t know what it takes the get the Le Chateau snakepit shut down or cleaned up, whichever, but now that there’s a new alderman, the neighbors ought to go to work on getting that place cleaned up. It’s a shelter for sex offenders with a kid’s playlot right next to it, and the behavior of the tenants is disgusting.
Someone I know up here in Rogers Park, a local condo owner, was instrumental in getting over a dozen bad buildings vacated, by constant harping- organizing neighborhood actions, calling the alderman’s office, circulating petitions. You have legal grounds for getting a crime-pit building vacated or sold, mainly Neighborhood Endangerment and Harboring Criminal Activity. RP neighbors were successful in getting the formerly noisome 1200 W Pratt sold and vacated along with 4 other fetid properties under the same ownership, and this building was rehabbed for sale as condos. They didn’t sell for it was too late in the game to palm off tiny, overpriced units as condos, but it’s a nice rental with good tenants now. Le Chateau could be either completed gutted and built out into larger units, or it could at least be cleaned up as a habitation for nice, low-income elderly and disabled, and be an asset to the area instead of a blight-pit. I think that a determined effort and lots of complaints to the new alderman will get results that were impossible under the old regime.
Laura-
I’m with you on this. I live in north Lakeview, and I’m DISGUSTED by SROs. They ruin neighborhoods. I’m just sick enough of it to start rattling some cages.
Thanks God these Lakeview SROs are starting to be shut down for legitimate safety/code violations (Sheffield House, Bel Air, Diplomat). I know that there are some decent people who live there, but for the most part SROs seem to the breeding grounds for drugs, prostitution, vagrants, etc. And the owners of these places are f*ing slumlords who care nothing for the building, residents, or community.
The bleeding hearts say that the ‘residents’ are just ‘good people’ who can’t scrape together enough $ for a security deposit on an apartment. But, some of these people have been there for years or decades, and have not helped themselves move on. It’s time for them to move on, and stop crying that they can’t live in Lakeview anymore. Hell, I’ve been priced out of many apartments over the years, and no one cared that I had to move, and pay more if I wanted to stay in the neighborhood.
And, guess what. There’s a lot of land and a lot of vacant buildings in and around Chicago. SROs do not need to be 3 doors down from Lincoln Park and Diversey Harbor (Bel Air). Or near schools and play lots, in this case.
Call me cold or uncaring, I don’t give a shit. No more Lakeview SROs. Look at what has happened to Uptown. 30 years of blight. It’s a shame. These neighborhoods were grand in their day, and should be restored to their former state.
Alderman Cappleman and Tunney: step up and serve the tax-paying residents of your wards.
TB, I’m sympathetic.
The sad thing is that these places do not need to be sumps, and we could use a few nice ones for elderly people and others who need a very simple lifestyle. But there is no question that they lend themselves to very exploitative “cash cow” management, and the ugly thing is that they are VERY PROFITABLE being run this way. The people who own them tend to be rich and well-connected, and they are often owned by “society” people- old money that hides behind land trusts and that is not motivated to run them properly because that would cost more money- and that is well-connected enough to fend off neighborhood efforts to improve and/or vacate the dumps.
Screening tenants costs money and so does fixing plumbing and wiring, and making the place aesthetically pleasing costs a lot more. Landlords of moderate-priced apartment buildings do all these things and meet the demands of picky tenants and that’s why their buildings are so much less profitable and they tend not to be so rich.
And that’s why you must double down your efforts to clean up or close up these places. Start with the building that is the worst offender. It will take a LOT of work, even with the alderman on your side, because you will be a threat to some rich, plugged-in person’s lush livelihood. But if you are persistent and very loud, you can win.
Thanks, Laura.
I agree that senior centers would be a good use for the properties.
A good friend of mine is a concerned, involved business owner in Uptown. He’s working hard to clean the area up. He basically said the same things as you, and I believe he is an informed source.
Another thing I’ve learned from him is that many of the homeless shelters in Uptown have a similar, profitable business model. Apparently they collect big subsidies from state, city, and/or federal coffers for every person they ‘house’.
But, I’m told there are no real standards for running a shelter. There’s no licensing required, no standards of the accommodations they must provide, no professional security, etc. They pack ‘em in tight, and bill the taxpayer bigtime.
Most people would think these shelters and SROs are run for the good of the residents. But no, they are very much ‘for profit’ ventures. And, apparently they’re very profitable, despite their rough appearances.
Thankfully, I sense this is all slowly changing right now. The slumlords are worried, I’m told. Suddenly they want to cooperate with the community they’re been screwing for 30 years. But they have very little political traction now that new leadership is in place.