Is Chicago The Best Big City Bargain? 2740 N. Pine Grove in East Lincoln Park
This 1-bedroom in the Park View at 2740 N. Pine Grove in East Lincoln Park recently came on the market.
Park View is a 178 unit high rise with a parking garage that was built in 1974.
This unit faces east and has lake views from its balcony.
The listing says it was “just upgraded”.
It has hardwood floors throughout the living room and bedroom.
The kitchen has white cabinets, stainless steel appliances and what looks like new counter tops with an under mount sink.
There’s no central air, but there are wall units.
There’s no washer/dryer in the unit as the building has a laundry room.
And there’s no parking included although the listing indicates that parking is available.
The pictures seem to indicate there isn’t a door to the bedroom.
But this unit is in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the city.
And it’s listed at under $200,000, at $199,500.
Is this property more evidence that Chicago has the most affordable major city housing market in America?
Gary Weglarz at Applebrook Realty has the listing. See the pictures here.
Unit #15C: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 550 square feet
- Sold in May 1992 for $70,000
- Lis pendens foreclosure filed in October 2015
- Deed transferred in May 2017
- Listed in May 2018 for $199,500
- Assessments of $256 a month (includes doorman, exterior maintenance, lawn care, scavenger, snow removal)
- Taxes of $2135
- No central air but wall unit cooling
- No washer/dryer in the unit- laundry room in the building
- No parking but parking is available in the building
- Bedroom: 13×10
- Living room: 16×14
- Kitchen: 9×7
- Foyer: 8×7
Affordable? Perhaps. Location location location and that’s about it. Just rent and save your money for another day.
Not really a 1 BR; appears to be a convertible studio (and maybe partially “converted” by adding a partial wall.
IF THIS IS 550SF I HAVE A MAN-PENIS LOLZ!!
GO CUBBIES!!!
“luxury”
lmfao, yeah… ok
No parking. Strike one.
No in-unit laundry. Strike two.
Not a true one-bedroom. WHIF. I’m out. Pass.
Would make a great airbnb option if this building allowed it.
To spend the money on the upgrades and not pay a professional photographer to properly show it off on the MLS is incredibly dumb and unfortunate.
Looks a lot like an updated version of a studio I rented on Wellington near Pine Grove one summer when I was a student. Now, that was technically in Lakeview and this is technically Lincoln Park, but the neighborhood is essentially the same.
The rent on that place was less than what I’d paid for a studio in Ann Arbor.
I don’t like this place at all, but sure, Chicago is extremely affordable compared to many other big cities.
Overall, Chicago is affordable compared with NYC and the West Coast, but I wouldn’t use a crummy 1970’s building like this as a great example of that.
A better example is the fact that one can buy a really great 2-bedroom condo in a modern or vintage building on Lake Shore Drive in the Gold Coast for $1mln when a similar unit would go for $4 mln or more in NYC or San Francisco.
Addendum:
It’s too bad so many lousy buildings were constructed in Lincoln Park and Lakeview in the 60’s and 70’s. Look at the horrible stretch of architecture along the east side of Sheridan between Diversey and Belmont, for instance. What a disaster.
This unit is horrible, by the way. I can’t see why anyone would spend $200,000 on it. I can barely understand why it would even be worth the $70,000 price it fetched in 1992. My wife paid a little more than that in 1994 for a true one-bedroom in a much better building nearby.
“a really great 2-bedroom condo in a modern or vintage building on Lake Shore Drive in the Gold Coast for $1mln when a similar unit would go for $4 mln or more in … San Francisco.”
Over the last 2 years, fewer than 10 2/2 condos have sold per year over $4m. Most of them have been “penthouse size”, which you can’t get in Chicago for $1m, if “really great”.
You certainly get a bigger place for the same $$ here, but the conversion isn’t 4x in that range.
“Taxes of $2135”
New (first pass) AV = 17,624. At last year’s tax rate, taxes would be $3,382.
BYOF (bring your own fridge) This is an OK deal compared to an un-rehabbed unit on a lower floor that sold recently:
https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/2740-N-Pine-Grove-Ave-60614/unit-6G/home/13368493
Just depends if you want to own with all the hallmarks of renting (coin laundry, rental parking) and having to move out when you eventually combine households with someone else….and having to buy a fridge. Did they screw up and size the fridge space so no normal sized fridge fits in there? I am totally confused by some of the half-a$$ness details of this listing. Agree on the photos.
Killer view from the balcony though. If you could hang on to this unit for the rental income down the line, it would be worth looking into. If the building limits your ability to rent units, I would put this on the pass list.
“this unit for the rental income”
What’s this rent for? $1300?
So, using part of ol’ Stevo’s back of the envelope method:
12*(1300-256)-3200 = $9328 in gross rent, ignoring the fridge, vacancy, repairs. For a gross, unlevered, cap of 4.6%. Which isn’t much of a spread over investment prop mortgage rates, so the levered number would only be a little bit better.
This would look a helluva lot better as a rental play at $150k.
Chicago may not continue to be a bargain… Crains claiming today in an article that Chicago gains more households headed by someone under 45 making $100k than any other city except NYC.
Crains isn’t claiming anything. Those are census estimates. It is clear from all the high end construction amd leasing/sales that there is plenty of demand in Chicago.
Liz,
That un-rehabbed unit at 2740 N. Pine Grove you posted looks very much like the 1970s-era apartment I rented on the outskirts of Michigan City, Indiana, for $325 a week back in the mid-1990s when I started my career there as a reporter for the local paper. Right down to the kitchen appliances and cabinets. How depressing!
Correction – it was $325 a month, not a week.
Michigan City is not a nice place. That sounds expensive for the 1990s.
“Crains claiming today in an article that Chicago gains more households headed by someone under 45 making $100k than any other city except NYC.”
Net gain of 26,000 from 2010-2016. Obviously doesn’t even include the last 18 months of which a couple more thousand likely moved in (if the leasing rates of the luxury rental towers are any indication.)
Those expensive apartments ARE being absorbed. That could only happen if a lot of highly paid workers were moving in.
I think it said that those over $200k also saw a nice jump but it was unclear if the young people making $100k would stick around in Chicago to gain the experience and eventually make the $200k in a number of years.
Chicago also has the highest percentage of people with Bachelor’s degrees of any big city in the nation.
All the doom and gloom about everyone fleeing Illinois (and also Chicago) is wrong. Yes, people are leaving. Lots of them are likely retiring Baby Boomers as the weather HAS been appalling, so why retire here? Additionally, many southern states have lower or no state income tax. Duh.
But, the young people ARE moving into Chicago. The gains were mostly downtown and the north side, no shock there.
This is key to the health of the city for the next 20 years.
Cheap housing has to be one of the lures. We have great cultural institutions, sports, restaurants, architecture and the job market is strong. Plenty of opportunities here.
There is so much room to expand in Chicago. We have huge swaths of the city that live in squalor and can be gentrified if more people move here. Look at what’s happening in East Garfield Park. I had one set of friends that moved there and they started having parties and now one other couple just bought in Garfield Park. None of us had ever spend time there (except to go to the Conservatory) before couple 1 moved there.
We don’t have the space issues of New York, Palo Alto, Boston, San Francisco, etc. We also have public transportation that runs through horrible areas and that could be gentrified.
I get really irritated when the politicians here talk about setting aside affordable units when Chicago is filled with affordable housing. A quick search shows hundreds of homes priced between $50,000 and $200,000 in Chicago.
“But, the young people ARE moving into Chicago. The gains were mostly downtown and the north side, no shock there.”
good they can buy my house while I GTFOOH
Michigan City isn’t very nice, it’s true. I was very glad to leave. The $325 a month in 1994 was cheap even for then and there. And the apartment was in a really crumby complex that was lousy even when compared with other apartments in the area. I should have found something better but I knew I wasn’t there for the long term. I moved back to Chicago in 1996.
@anon (tfo) – I am not suggesting one buy this as investment property. I am saying don’t buy it to live in it without also getting the right to rent it should your situation change in the future.
liz–I know, but the point essentially remains the same; you’d be buying a rental-quality unit for about a 30% premium over appropriate rental-quality valuation. Which is fine if its someplace you’d actually like to live for an extended period.