Selling for Less Than 2006 Prices: 2658 N. Seminary in Lincoln Park
We’ve chattered a lot about how prices are (or are not) holding steady in Lincoln Park – with the argument being it’s a “prime” address.
This seller at 2658 N. Seminary seems to be pricing realistically for this housing market. It’s actually listed for less than it was sold for in 2006 (and no, it’s not a short sale.)
It seems to have the full package:
Central air, washer/dryer in the unit, a parking spot, and nice outdoor space.
There is no square footage listed but here are the room sizes:
- Living room: 22×14
- Dining room: 14×10
- Kitchen: 17×10
- Bedroom #1: 12×12
- Bedroom #2: 11×9
Here’s the listing:
Beautiful blend of vintage and new in this must see top floor unit in the heart of Lincoln Park! New kitchen with granite and stainless steel appliances, and touches of vintage like the 10 foot sliding pocket doors between the formal dining room and living area.
Living room with fireplace/built-in bookcases, gorgeous hardwood floors throughout. In-unit laundry, central air, private deck overlooking tree tops and on-site parking included too! Charm and character throughout.
Art Collazo at Koenig & Strey has the listing (virtual tour here.)
Unit #F: 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths
- Sold in September 2006 for $410,000
- Currently listed for $399,899
- Assessments of $154 a month
- Taxes of $4,843
- Central air
- In-unit w/d
AWESOME! Wish it was mine!
It’s beautiful and the price feels right.
It is small and has a rear door in the master bedroom. 2nd bedroom is more like a closet. 11×9 is a stretch.
Looks nice on the inside! According to Google maps, though, it overlooks a gas station / 5-way intersection at Seminary/Shubert/Lincoln.
Can it even be counted as a bedroom if there is an exterior entrance in it? I thought such a room could not be counted as a bed, but had to be called a “den” or something.
Still an awfully spacious, good-looking place in a prime neighborhood, with private outdoor space.
Steve, sounds like you’re setting it so you can give your usual rebuttal to evidence of price drops in your favorite neighborhoods: “The price didn’t drop, they simply overpaid in 2006.”
This means, of course, that by definition you can never be disproved. You and the Intelligent Design folks have something in common: You Believe.
Is there a reason why people are so hard on Steve? I like that he provides a more optimistic view to balance out the rest of us. Some of the crib chatter commenters have their own agenda and love to predict just how bad the real estate apocalypse is going to get, and that’s fine too. I like a good mix of opinions, but I’m starting to feel bad for Steve. Maybe I’m missing part of the back story here. Did he approve a three-year-old for an interest-only loan or something? Does he drink the tears of children who are evicted from the foreclosed homes?
Don’t frown for me Danny. I do just fine and like to laugh at these renters for what they are. I am buying up bank owned properties and appreciate the price drops in some of these high prises.
Danny, you have a good point, and even though I just poked him in the eye, sometimes I feel sorry for him, too, and I certainly don’t want to chase him away. He does provide a nice foil, if nothing else. For me, the occasional feelings of animosity are driven by his nasty remarks about a) other posters on the board, and b) people not of his worldview (savvy renters) or of his income class (which he professes is high. But of course, who knows.) He is not the worst one on the Board, though, with the nasty comments, so… mea culpa. That wasn’t a nice thing for me to say.
Thanks, Steve. You could not have provided a better demonstration of my comment! (Feeling a little bit less sorry for Steve again…)
I am sorry, but why is it ‘optimistic’ that home prices have been run up so high by speculators?
Is it ‘optimistic’ that median income families cannot afford a median priced home?
Is it ‘optimistic’ that buyers have to resort to creative financing for home ownership?
Is it ‘optimistic’ that capital was misallocated for excess housing rather than real infrastructure investments?
The real ‘optimism’ for american economy is just beginning, the market is finally restoring the american dream and there’s nothing wrong with it.
I just wish that SH provided some facts behind his opinions.
Here’s the latest mls closing data for Lincoln Park:
Year June 2nd Q 1st H July
1997 144 413 619 117
1998 156 438 686 133
1999 135 393 628 138
2000 135 390 637 110
2001 142 356 561 130
2002 138 403 619 129
2003 167 431 670 176
2004 186 452 727 168
2005 205 540 863 219
2006 163 439 679 143
2007 187 511 780 167
2008 111 300 476 119
YOY -41% -41% -39% -29%
YOY Peak -46% -44% -45% -46%
Sales have fallen off a cliff during a period of increased supply (think teardowns for units and conversions.) Credit is increasingly difficult to obtain and unemployment is on the rise.
Prices will not be going sideways.
G – I will have to disagree with your commentary. Volume is down but so are listings. The ratio of listed vs contracted vs sold properties in LP is the same as it was in 2003 – 2005. I can’t post the graph but go to CAR’s website and check it out. This is data is of June 2008…
Lower volume does not lead to lower prices unless supply is up. This may be true in the South Loop (hence the price declines) but it is NOT true in LP.
Thanks for your time.
If this sells at list these people got out _lucky_. This is only ~2.5% below peak pricing, yet the Case Shiller Index for Chicago is ~10% below peak pricing. That would put the market value of this unit around 370k if you assume it was priced correctly in 2006.
Wow Stevo….you are out of touch. Subprime tanked, Alt-A’s are tanking too, and now the report just out shows substantial Prime mortgage foreclosures beyond expectations. There is only one solution, lower home prices. It will come, period.
CAR Webisite?
California Colorado? association of realtors? how bout a link or anything to back up your statements?
One would assume chicago but i feel like being a jack*SS considering this might be ther first time SteveH has anything to back up his statements.
SH, still nothing to back up your claims? Typical of every claim you have made. So where do you suppose all of those sellers went? They certainly didn’t sell, as the numbers show. The pent-up sellers will reappear. I mean, weren’t you one of those telling them to “wait for the spring selling season” or “LP never loses value?” This winter is going to be fun. And for those who continue to wait to sell, the spring will be even more enjoyable. For buyers, that is.
But it still won’t be the bottom.
Laura – no reason a bedroom can’t have an outside door, you’re thinking of a bedroom requiring a closet (I recall this argument on a NYC housing blog, they insisted a bedroom didn’t need one). I’m guessing that the bedroom with the door used to be a kitchen – I really dislike a lot of rehabs which have awful long corridors to the back door or a bedroom on the back porch.
I certainly won’t claim to have any data to back this up, but I’ve been obsessively watching prices on the low-end for townhouses and single family homes in Lincoln Park for almost two years now. I have seen a few surprisingly low prices here and there, but they’ve usually been for places with serious deal breaker issues. For the most part, I haven’t noticed a difference in the size and quality of the townhouses available for under 500K. I also haven’t noticed a big change in the number of SFHs or two-flats in LP for under 600K. Most of them are still where they’ve always been…right along the el on Bissell. I want to buy something, but most of the commenters have me feeling like I’m supposed to wait until 2b/2ba townhouses start popping up for 350K all over Lincoln Park…and I’m just not sure that’s ever going to happen. Granted, I think condos there will probably keep falling for another year, but from my non-scientific observations, it seems like prices for townhouses and SFHs in LP aren’t falling….at least for the types of places in my price range.
Danny, you are right. The prices in LP haven’t fallen… much… yet. Two things have protected LP. The first is, there wasn’t that much room to build, and the older stock was in good enough condition that few conversions happened. That limited the supply bubble. The other thing that protected LP is that *relatively* speaking, the people who bought there were not subprime.
The lack of supply (contra, say, South Loop or frankly, even Streeterville) continues to be a strong point for LP. But the credit issue? There was lots and lots of Alt-A (“alternative-A-prime” — meaning people had good credit, but were buying places too expensive for their stated income, at prices too big relative to normal, historical appreciation norms). The Alt-A bust is not even done with the first half of the first inning.
And *no area* will be immune from the continued tightening in the credit markets, and few are immune from the continued deterioration in the economy generally.
Take at look at calculatedrisk.blogspot.com for predictions/discussions of coming price drops in the expensive areas, which up to know have escaped the carnage. Will it ever be as bad as South Loop? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be drops. I seriously doubt you’ll ever pick up a nice SFH in LP for $350K. But you won’t be paying a million for it, either.
It remains a mystery to me but prices do not appear to be falling in Lakeview either. It wasn’t too long ago that I even saw evidence of prices rising. However, it seems inevitable that the plague will trickle inward – from northwest Lakeview to southern Lakeview to northern Lincoln Park. Like I keep saying, if you can buy a place across the street for less money you will.
Thanks for the insights and the link!
Gary,
Prices are falling in Lincoln Park at the entry level, too. Take a look at 3009 N Clifton: 230->210k, 717 W Barry A4 225->210k, 616 W Barry 225k->215k over the past 1-23 months.
Maybe its not widespread yet but most of these reductions started to pick up steam the past month. The march to affordability has started in earnest at the entry level.
Gary,
Prices are falling in Lincoln Park at the entry level, too. Take a look at 3009 N Clifton: 230->210k, 717 W Barry A4 225->210k, 616 W Barry 225k->215k over the past 1-3 months.
Maybe its not widespread yet but most of these reductions started to pick up steam the past month. The march to affordability has started in earnest at the entry level.
Actually, those properties are in Lakeview. Nevertheless, the Barry locations don’t count because they are simply reductions of asking prices. You need to see actual sales data to say that prices are going down. In fact, they’re still asking more for the 616 property than the previous sale. Of course, that doesn’t mean they are going to get it.
The Clifton property is a different story. If you believe the public records that’s a whopping price drop – but the public records looks screwy on this and half the other properties out there.
But I’m still seeing Lakeview properties going for more than they did a couple of years ago.
The entry level is the most affected by the new lending requirements. The people who want to buy these low priced properties were relying on 95% financing. This has been known for a long time.
Steve, low end AND middle range buyers were actually relying on not only 100% financing, but most of all on loans that were 4X or more their incomes.
For reasons I am at a loss to fathom, the lending industry in the early 80s decided that people could “afford” mortgages for 4X their income. That is now the CONSERVATIVE lending standard!
Pencil through it using your own income, and you will see what this is doing to borrowers.
No bloody wonder this country on whole has a negative savings rate! It doesn’t matter what income bracket you are in- a mortgage for 4X your income leaves you with too little room to move, let alone save. At lower income brackets, it is totally tragic.
But we exceeded even that louche standard in this late speculative rampage. Look at the loans in default and you will see large numbers of mortgages for 6X, 7X, or more, the borrowers income, made possible by the creativity of modern finance. IO loans were commonplace, and so were Pay Option ARMs, the most evil financial product ever created for the common consumer.
Add to that the fact that most people are already swimming in consumer debt by the time they buy, with 4 or 5 toppy credit card balances, plus two car loans.
And then factor in the incredible HELOC abuse, the likes of which no one prior to 1996 could imagine. I was wondering why houses in my mother’s affluent St. Louis suburb suddenly doubled in size after being almost untouched for 60 years, but I don’t any longer wonder why so many of them are now in foreclosure in numbers never before seen in that conservative burb.
Actually,100% financing has worked well for many people of my acquaintance, but they assumed loans well within their means, for no more than 2.5X their incomes. These folks are not even thinking of walking away despite the fact that a couple of them are somewhat underwater. They can pay, and they will pay- they see it as an obligation, and they didn’t buy to flip in any case.
But there is no way the financial system can survive the kind of rampant abuse of recent years. Even the 20s farm bubble was saner than this- at least they didn’t do Interest Only or Pay Option Arm.
Watch this video, it explains in great detail why the Chicago real estate market is still in a bubble…
http://www.chrismartenson.com/bubbles
Expect prices to fall back to the 2000 price level. Which is roughly another 30-40% decline.