Living the Vintage Life in Logan Square: 2501 N. Francisco
There are some lovely vintage properties in the Logan Square neighborhood including this 1914 4-unit building at 2501 N. Francisco.
This 3-bedroom unit just came on the market. It has central air and an in-unit washer/dryer but is missing a parking space.
What will the market be like for this conversion type vintage unit 3 years later?
Gino Albert at Sunshine Real Estate & Investment has the listing. See more pictures here.
Unit#2: 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, no square footage listed
- Sold in June 2005 for $275,000
- Sold in September 2006 for $280,000
- Currently listed for $349,000
- Assessments are $117 a month
- Taxes are “new”
- Central Air
- In-Unit W/D
- No parking
- Bedroom #1: 13×13
- Bedroom #2: 14×10
- Bedroom #3: 9×7
- Also has a separate dining room
Good looking place but the full bath leaves MUCH to be desired. Would bid $275K to make up for bathroom improvements and bubble buying by current home debtor
The acoustic guitar in the dining room is a nice hipster touch.
This is silly. $69,000 in appreciation from the bubble peak for what? Mediocre baths and kitchen?
Where is the vintage ‘artistry’? In the facade? I didn’t see any vintage details inside the unit. And where are the four units of the association? It looks like a two-story building in the photos.
I think $275k is a hard upper bound.
Not for $349… definitely sub $300k. I second a $275k price if not lower. The lack of a 2nd full bath and no parking makes this a no go imho. $350k can get a 2/2 with parking in arguably better areas.
June 05 to September 06 was still on the upside of the bubble here. Thus went up $5k in 15 months, and it’s been not quite 30 months since–so, even at bubble appreciation, this should only be at $290k.
Does anyone think they spent a dime on improvements?
I’ll take Rent This Condo for $1300, Alex!
Another hipster gonna learn math the hard way.
The hipster who lives in this dump probably needs that 70k to pay off his maxxed out HELOC.
No Parking
Who needs parking when you have a single gear bike? 🙂
I see the word hipster used a lot on this site and wasn’t sure what that was. For anyone who needs some background info on hipsters see http://www.hipsterhandbook.com/. This may help the old farts on the blog.
That kitchen set-up would drive me crazy.
You’re on a roll today!
“Bob on February 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I’ll take Rent This Condo for $1300, Alex!
Another hipster gonna learn math the hard way.”
Hilarious
“Sonies on February 10th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Who needs parking when you have a single gear bike? :)”
I didn’t know hipsters had enough disposable income to secure themselves a HELOC! Despite the references in the Hipster Handbook (which I can’t view right now because my commie Linux work computer doesn’t support Flash), my experience is that the thought of home ownership is far too mundane and fundamental to even cross a hipster’s mind (let alone being able to afford it), and they are otherwise far too mentally occupied with looking like an American Apparel ad incarnate and the latest indie band release.
I live nearby. This is super-overpriced. I’ve been watching SFHs and smaller multi-families and this seems completely out of whack. Especially, without parking. When you can get a two flat in the immediate vicinity for $500k, $349k w/o parking makes no sense.
Yeah, Bob’s right. It probably would rent for about $1300. Maybe $1400.
” And where are the four units of the association? ”
It’s on a corner; it’s a typical layout with a building that (almost) fills the entire lot and a second entrance on Atgeld for the two rear units. Doesn’t leave enough space for parking, thus, no parking for any of the 4 units.
The kitchen doesn’t have nearly enough counter space, and looks like the typical developer pergranisteel kitchen exactly like the ones shoved into every Rogers Park rahabbed condo between 2003 and 2006.
No vintage details inside the unit.
Given that $275K was the peak price for this place, and that prices need to drop 30% from the peak to be in line with Case-Schiller averages, I’d wait a while on this place. See what the price is two years from now after all the commercial defaults AND the Alt-A resets hit.
Anyone else notice that the third bedroom is 9×7?
I say $260,000.
This is a bit unrelated, but does anyone have thoughts on whether or not the first-time buyer tax credit in the stimulus package is going to provide a temporary boost to the market this spring/summer? I read that now they’re trying to push it from $7500 to 15K, which seems like a huge incentive to anyone buying entry-level places. I’m wondering if this spring might be my last chance to unload my condo for the next two or three years, or if everyone thinks things will be better for sellers next summer than they will be this summer.
We see sellers like this all the time on Crib Chatter. Does anyone here personally know someone like this, who is offering their unit way above a market clearing price? What is going on in their heads? Do they care if they sell their unit? Do they read the papers? Are they independently wealthy? Are they parents of infants thinking of a move to the suburbs and better schools but not allowing themselves to feel particularly rushed? I am sure that among the sellers trying to unload their place for $50k higher than any units in their association ever sold there are some very reasonable people, but I can’t imagine what their reasoning is.
What about the realtors? Are they hard up for clients? Bored? Delusional? Waiting for a government bailout to generate a spike in activity?
“This is a bit unrelated, but does anyone have thoughts on whether or not the first-time buyer tax credit in the stimulus package is going to provide a temporary boost to the market this spring/summer?”
Sure, it will have a little bit of effect. Primarily it will push some knifecatchers off the fence, people who have bought into the Realtor BS that the market is at bottom know and think this makes buying now “the deal of the century”…meanwhile foreclosures will keep piling up, prices will continue to fall and those who wait this out will get a much bigger bonus than the $15K.
It’s not just for first time homebuyers. And it doesn’t phase out above a certain income.
It will be a boon to sellers, sure. But not to buyers. Everyone you are competing with gets the same $15,000 break you do. Rational sellers will just up their prices by $15,000. It’s designed to put a floor on prices.
As JPS notes, it will fail. But it will cost a lot of money along the way.
Chris the easy answer is “But they can’t just give it away!”
KW,
Its a bit simplistic to assume the government subsidy will go 100% to the sellers. It will likely get split between the parties, with the party with the most leverage taking more of it. These days buyers seem to have all the leverage so I’m inclined to think prices won’t be bumped by 15k. Maybe 5k.
Best case senario is that some inventory will move at a discounted price. Anyone who things this will stimulate price increases is drinking the kool-aid.
“Its a bit simplistic to assume the government subsidy will go 100% to the sellers. It will likely get split between the parties”
Not a direct comparison, but what happened with the tax credits for hybrid cars? It bascially all went to the dealers, who sold the cars for the amount of the credit over MSRP. With housing, it’s more likely that a substanial part of a $15k decrease (that would have happened w/o the credit) will be avoided.
Tiny condo associations are often wracked with personal conflicts between unit owners and major disagreements concerning maintenance, chores, and assessments. Often a nightmare situation. Worth avoiding.
As an older building originally intended for low rents (blue-collar tenants) this “Home Depot” 4-unit conversion may contain many original and/or older systems, probable multiple “special assessment” candidate, and likely decline again into “low rent” blue-collar tenancy, but with individual owner of each unit.
anon(tfo),
Its funny you mentioned that. I have a hybrid. Yes I begrudgingly admit it (its not a Prius and wasn’t purchased to make any sort of statement), purchased in September 2007 for quite a bit under MSRP. I got the fully amount of the credit on my 2007 tax refund.
I researched online and talked the dealer down to a price barely worth their time selling it me (well under MSRP, ~$250 above true invoice). But I realized it would be tough to get this low without kicking them an incentive like the extended warranty.
Its incorrect to assume the credit all went to the sellers. Maybe when gas was at $4+/gallon.
Chris,
I agree that sellers hurt themselves by pricing too high. When I looked at the sales data, it seemed that people were either pricing right and selling within a month or 2, or they were listing too high, with a series of price reductions – when those finally did sell, it seemed that it was below what they could have gotten if they just priced better initially. I think this is because people ask what’s wrong with a condo that’s been on the market for over a year, and require a bigger discount.
If I had to guess the reason, it’s a combination of 1. people would be under water if they listed for market clearing price 2. they don’t want to sell for a loss 3. they are hoping that it just takes one buyer 4. figure they can always price reduce later.
fullhouse,
(1) seems not to be the case here.
(2) is irrelevant. They are listing their home. Do they want to sell or not? Most of them are going to buy a home to replace the one they sold. If so, the transaction is a housing swap with a dollar adjustment for relative value. They would be better off focusing their energy on getting a reasonable deal as buyers to offset any punishment they receive as sellers.
(3) is wishful thinking. What I want to know is what thought process/psychological state allows them to consider (3) to be a reasonable approach to their financial situation.
(4) seems to contradict the aversion you describe that many sellers have to listing their unit for too long.
I think many of these sellers are childishly unserious about selling their units.
Bob, you know that hipsters drive hybrids.
Chris,
I didn’t say the reasons are good – it’s just my best guess why… I never said sellers have an aversion to listing for a long time. Actually, I think a lot of sellers are not in much of a hurry to sell their places.
fullhouse it’s called chasing the market down and the behavior is just irrational as initially listing it for a high price. Personally I think it’s a DABDA sort of thing, finding out your house is worse less than you owe, and high prices are the denial stage, $5,000 reductions are the bargaining stage, taking it off the market is depression, and acceptance is the large price reduction in the spring.
Laura,
30% drop is a pretty bold claim – if you believe that you should sell CME housing futures, which are trading at a 10% drop.
“Given that $275K was the peak price for this place, and that prices need to drop 30% from the peak to be in line with Case-Schiller averages, I’d wait a while on this place. See what the price is two years from now after all the commercial defaults AND the Alt-A resets hit.”
valasko,
Lets be honest here, hipsters can’t afford them. Although they would welcome me as one of their own I am sure if they saw me driving it, I’d be hesitant to give any a lift however as their Vans sneakers would likely be a tad dirty for the carpet.
Silly hispters, hybrids are toys for people with real jobs. A 5k premium for the hybrid version is nothing to me, but to a hipster thats a half year’s worth of bartending tips.
“CME housing futures, which are trading at a 10% drop”
From today, or from the peak? If they’re trading at 10% drop from peak, doesn’t that mean they are trading at an increase from current house pricing?
Bob, just pulling your chain. But am sure a hipsters parent or two have funded the purchase.
From today (for Chicago)… I misread the 30% from the peak.
30% for Chicago is nothing if you look at the price declines in FL, NV, CA, AZ. If we feel even half the pain of these states then 30% is fair. 2 years ago people argued there would be no price decline at all, i.e. soft landing or subprime is contained….a 30% is not out of the question. There are entire subdivisions where houses selling for $50,000 in FL. SH joked that $100,000 was too cheap – the $300 housing payment – But if he gets excited about $100k houses he should check out FL where there are plenty of deals on new homes, or in the Inland Empire where $100k homes are hotter than hotcakes. It’s coming baby, it’s coming. These jokester who list for $349k will eventually return the keys to the bank and they’ll sell the REO for $175k to some knife catcher on the way down. Don’t make the mistake of misunderestimating (!) the depth and longevity of this bubble and what its going to do to prices.
For SFHs in Chicagoland 30% drop from here is definitely possible. That puts us squarely back to 2000 pricing. For condos in Chicago the data so far does not indicate this is likely, at least not yet.
Condos are only off 7% off their peak in Chicago, a much smaller decline than SFH values over Chicagoland. I am quite surprised condos are retaining their value better than SFHs as I had always assumed the opposite was true.
Bob, condos are holding their price but keep in mind that few are actually selling. Volume has literally dropped off a cliff. It’s the same pattern everywhere in the country, first volume slows down, median price rises, volume drops off a cliff…then, like wile e coyote, condo prices will soon crash too. 7% is a drop in the bucket. We’re not going to crash like in the IE or FL but mark my words we’re in for price declines like you would never believe could happen here.
225, no parking, 3rd bedroom isnt really a “bedroom” and Logan Square aint that great.
“we’re in for price declines like you would never believe could happen here”
Um, that *who* could never believe? There’s believe could happen and hope won’t happen. You just need to look at CRE prices from the late 80s to the mid-90s to know what “could” happen to housing–50% off of crazy peak pricing is not impossible anywhere.
But if you are saying that house values will, in general, collapse to the salvage value of the building materials, with the raw land surrendered for taxes, *that* would be a decline I couldn’t believe.
Its already happening in places like Detroit so I see no reason why this couldn’t happen in some poverty-stricken Chicago neighborhoods as well if the economy here deteriorates significantly. I don’t see it happening in any neighborhood that any CCer would ever consider living in though.
“But if you are saying that house values will, in general, collapse to the salvage value of the building materials, with the raw land surrendered for taxes, “
See the southside
“But if you are saying that house values will, in general, collapse to the salvage value of the building materials, with the raw land surrendered for taxes, *that* would be a decline I couldn’t believe.”
HD:
Answer the question–who could never believe? What apocolypse are you foreseeing?
Historically SFHs hold value better than condos. Condo prices will fall precipitously this year. Assessments….
My projection of a 30% drop from the peak is possibly a little timid.
This so-called recession is going to be much longer and deeper than the shills working for the financial houses and trilling on CNBC and other idiotic financial programs would have us believe. Our leaders are in frantic denial about the total unwinding of the credit bubble economy, but you can tell that they’re in full panic mode from the insanity of the programs they’re promulgating to alleviate the situation, which are not only not going to help, but are going to add considerably to the pain… if they don’t take government debt to levels where the treasury cannot possibly meet the debt service and is forced into default.
The cost of the insane “stimulus” plan has ballooned to over a trillion dollars. Think what this means when you add it to the $5 trillion or so in assistance and other interventions of the past year and a half.
Do you realize what a treasury default would do to us?
I am hearing that if unemployment today were measured by the same metric used in the 30s, that our unemployment would be stated at 20%.
Now, I originally projected a 30% drop from the peak,back in 2005, to bring housing prices here back in line with Case-Schiller. However, things are much, much worse than I thought they would be. I merely thought that prices would drop as homes started to sit unsold in 2005 forward, prices having reached levels unaffordable to prospective buyers. However, I did not allow for the credit situation. While I knew that snaky lending was driving the whole thing, I had no idea just how bad the mortgage situation was. I had no idea that not only were people borrowing way beyond their means to begin with, but that a huge percentage of middle-class ($75K-$200K a year earnings)were borrowing against homes they’d bought cheaply 20 or 30 years before, to finance all the consumer crap people were buying. It might turn out that the HELOCs of middle-class borrowers are the biggest credit boondoggle of all, for there might be even more money borrowed this way than in first mortgages. Fully 30% of all homeowners borrowed against their houses to buy cars, extravagant home improvements, vacations, facelifts, whatever,during the boom years. Then, we are just now beginning to see the Alt-A resets and recasts- I was nearly one of those but the seller wouldn’t come down to my price. I’m glad, for the place is worth way less now.
If this economy continues to lose jobs, and if the financial sector that is so big a part of the Chicago economy continues to contract- and I don’t see why it won’t for there is so much redundancy and so many bad institutions-then we could be looking at an even steeper correction in home prices, especially at the high end.
The real issues going forward is that it will be another 70 years before the banks allow consumers to take on this much debt. Like I said in the last year I’ve switched areas of law into bankruptcy and the amount of debt I’ve seen is staggering. The amount of debt consumers have is so absurb, just absolutely absurb. From what I hear the major causes of BK before this bubble was medical bills, illness, divorce and job loss. 99% of the cases I see people are working but have tens of thounsands in credit card debt and enormous mortgages compared to thier income. The amount some people owe on mortgages, credit cards and student loans is staggering. The ability to borrow so much drove up the price of homes and the inability to borrow (And keeping those who can within conventional standards) is driving prices down. Of course I have a biased view becauase all I see is the destruction of the economy all day long…but if I unexpectedly and suprisingly made the move from civil litigation into bankruptcy because there’s just SO MUCH OF IT that should tell you something about the overall general economy.
“I had no idea that not only were people borrowing way beyond their means to begin with, but that a huge percentage of middle-class ($75K-$200K a year earnings)were borrowing against homes they’d bought cheaply 20 or 30 years before, to finance all the consumer crap people were buying.”
“It might turn out that the HELOCs of middle-class borrowers are the biggest credit boondoggle of all, for there might be even more money borrowed this way than in first mortgages.”
I know that rants aren’t expected to be entirely factual, but even in context, this is a doozy of baseless speculation.
And when the contrarians said “home prices will crash”, ‘they’ said “that will never happen, there is no bubble” and look where we are today. To call her prediction ‘a doozy of baseless speculation’ really isn’t that much different than “subprime is contained.”
“I know that rants aren’t expected to be entirely facttual, but even in context, this is a doozy of baseless speculation.”
I believe anon was responding to her claim there may be more money borrowed with HELOCs than first mortgages. Laura – you’re saying so confidently what you believe (and what you believed in 2005)… have you sold housing futures?
From what I can tell, the HELOC market is $1 trillion, which is MUCH smaller than the first mortgage market.
This is speculation:
““It might turn out that the HELOCs of middle-class borrowers are the biggest credit boondoggle of all,”
This is an incorrect fact:
“for there might be even more money borrowed this way than in first mortgages.”
HD:
Are you sure you’re a lawyer? I quoted a single sentence from 7 paragraphs and specifically questioned the assertion of fact therein. I challenged *nothing* else (not for lack of material–but, as I noted, it’s a rant–there should be a fair amount of latitude).
By your response, I take it you agree that “there might be even more money borrowed [on HELOCs, by middle-class borrowers] than in first mortgages” is a reasonable proposition?
fullhouse: “have you sold housing futures?”
Most of us don’t have the resources to ride out the irrationality of the market. Maintaining solvency is a challenge.
“This is an incorrect fact:
“for there might be even more money borrowed this way than in first mortgages.””
No, it’s baseless speculation. “might be” is a weasal phrase; as in “HD might be a homeless person”–I’m not saying it’s a fact, just that “it might be”. Indeed, it is the “might” in “It might turn out that the HELOCs of middle-class borrowers are the biggest credit boondoggle of all” that turns it from a prediction (“HELOCs will turn out to be the biggest credit boondoggle”) into speculation (“Maybe”).
In retrospect, I should have cut out the first clause, but I hate to remove all context.
I’m not homeless, I live in an apartment in uptown
a studio in uptown
anon(tfo) you get so riled up
“anon(tfo) you get so riled up”
Please. Nothing here exhibits me being riled up. Put me in the vicinity of Pete Geraci, then you’ll see riled up.