“Take My Home, Please!” 2720 N. Dayton in Lakeview
Time Out Chicago has its annual real estate issue out this week called “Where to live now.”
There are a few properties featured under a section called “motivated sellers” about sellers eager to sell their homes. In the magazine version, they are blurbs amongst the articles that say, “Take my home, please!”
One of them was a 3-bedroom unit at 2720 N. Dayton in Lakeview.
See Time Out’s coverage here with a few pictures.
This is the description of the unit from the article:
Seller’s motivation “I bought it with the intention that I could start a family in it and grow into it,” says the owner, who needs to move to Denver for work. Despite having refinished the floors and installed new heating and central air, the owner’s asking $10,000 less than the 2004 purchase price.
Best features Vaulted ceilings and a 200-square-foot deck make this Lakeview condo a jaw-dropper. It’s the top-floor unit on an extra-wide lot with unobstructed windows on all sides—and skylights.
How long will this unit take to sell?
Greg Alvarado at Coldwell Banker has the listing. See all of the pictures here.
Unit #3: 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1800 square feet
- Sold in August 2001 for $573,000
- Sold in July 2004 for $685,000
- Originally listed in October 2008 for $720,000
- Listing cancelled in November 2008
- Re-listed in February 2009 for $674,900
- Currently listed for $674,000 (parking included)
- Assessments of $150 a month
- Taxes of $7786
- Central air
I don’t if it is a steal, but it certainly is a reasonable starting price compared to what most sellers are doing.
Unit looks nice, if it wasn’t for the fact that I need two parking spots it is the sort of thing that I’d be interested in.
1. 2720 Dayton can be fairly called Lincoln Park.
2. $380/foot? And that’s if we believe the measurement. The building footprint is ~1800, so it may be close, but the rooms only total ~1200, so there’s probably a lot of hallway.
3. This is 8 years old. It needed new HVAC? What else did the builder do wrong?
4. $675k? Seriously? And $720 in October? Wow.
Units like this are gonna get killed. I actually really like this place, and I really value the amenities of being able to walk everywhere in LP/LV. But you can get a SFH in LP for 700k. 475k is my guess on this one and of course it will be an REO sale.
I’d really like to know where you can get a nice SFH in LP (close to the El and the parts of LP that people actually want to go to like this is) for 700k.
Everything that I have seen that is newer construction/has curb appeal/ in a nice part of LP/ etc. it at least $1MM, probably more like $1.25MM and up. Of course you get a lot more square footage then so on a $/sqft basis this might be overpriced to a SFH. Still, doesn’t mean that if this is your price range you can find a great SFH in LP.
kp,
Our definition of nice is clearly different. 2615 N Seminary is on the market for 700k and thats a great location to me (close to the el, quiet street, etc). I don’t put a premium on any sort of new construction also.
2615 Seminary is landlocked and has no parking
No it has one parking space per the MLS. See how spending a minute reading the entire MLS paragraph would make you look less foolish?
Also, “landlocked”? It is no further from the lake than this blog entry.
uwish, mewish you had a brain.
“I’d really like to know where you can get a nice SFH in LP (close to the El and the parts of LP that people actually want to go to like this is) for 700k.”
Is this really considered a SFH? Is one unit of a 3 unit building defined as a SFH? i’m not being sarcastic, i really don’t know.
I’m curious where the parking is for 2516 Seminary. “landlocked” means there is no alley. Since there’s no alley and no side drive, where is the space? Makes me wonder if its off-site at a newer condo building or something since its described as “deeded parking included”. Also the comments say “Bring your contractors, rehabbers and dreams! Sold in “as is” condition.” So while it looks decent in the pics, what do the non-photographed areas look like?
Bob – u might look less foolish if you used actual address, which is 2516 N. Seminary, not 2615.
I’m not sure if you understand the term land-locked, which means it has no rear or alley acess. (i couldn’t tell if you were playing dumb or not) Land-locked properties typically don’t have on-site parking, unless they can get a curb-cut on the street, which can be difficult to do.
And as i’m pretty sure we discussed, there is no on-site parking. It is a separately deeded spot – who knows where it is in relation to the “house”. If you have groceries and kids – do you want to trudge them two blocks in the snow in February?
I think Bob’s point stands. The SFH on Seminary isn’t a disaster zone, and it does have a parking spot. The convenience of not trudging 2 blocks is not worth that much. What’s remarkable about this place is that it’s been overpriced since 2001, and especially overpriced in 2004. You can get the same place with an additional 400 sqft in the same location for less money. I’m not sure there’s any place in Chicago worth over $350/sqft.
Again, it ain’t selling because the people who would buy the place are most likely going to be a dual income young power couple with no kids in their early to mid 30s making about $200k-$300k/year. Even though they can easily afford the monthly nut, they aren’t likely to cough up $130+ grand for a 20% down payment which is probably the bulk of their cash savings in combination with the fact their 401k is probably down 30% or more.
no man’s land.
bubbleboi, WOW for ‘poppin a bubble’ in action.
You know, I really like this site, but it seems there are a few ‘armachair’ RE pros who dictate what the…well everything is here.
To put it in the proper perspective:
“A Real Estate Broker feels the need to take a piss. If he goes into his private bathroom, which of course is in his office as opposed to going in the ‘common’ bathrooms, what would be the amount of energy he would save? Per pissing minute?
And, say he stood one foot from his urinal to take said piss, what would be the splatter ratio to actual urine that would be flushed (of course minus the amount caught in that pesky urinal aroma contraption?) into the system? Does he flush twice thereby weakening the strength of his urine? Could he legitimately say he took a piss at all?
Could he and his wife account (and pay) for the amount of urine that did not make it into the sewer system (and exactly WHAT counties system did that urine travel though?) What was the charge for doing so?”
You know, my grandfather was in the home construction business, as was my father, my four uncles and all of my brothers and cousins. To take such a business and break it down into this minute and seriously, unneeded analysis, is such a huge waste of time.
Humans need housing. People build to provide such housing. In between, there are those who make money on that transaction.
There is a reason I do not participate in these back and forths of breaking ALL listings on here down to a point where they are, in somebodies opinion, not even worth the paper or cyberspace they are printed on.
If you need a house, see what it is being sold for, consider what you can afford, and if you like it…WOW… a sale!!
OK enough said…I am off to NYC for a weekend of fun. Take what I have said and…well… piss on it…as is everything else that is posted here.
I’m pretty sure some of my quantitative analysis friends could come up with the formula to help you out with the urine percentage question. There are actually not too many unknowns in the presented scenario. We can get the average flow rate, you’ve provided the approximate distances, and splatter percentages are actually an interesting discussion in of themselves (I’ve read a white paper on Pollack’s splatter ratios).
Have fun in NYC!
On the point of the site – I agree there’s a lot of negativity about housing cost. I would say that I’ve gotten educated by some thoughtful responses, and from everyone including a few of the more acerbic folks. Anon (tfo)’s break downs rock, and I’ve learned more to pay attention to the conforming loan limits (417) plus what I could afford in a down payment as the reasonable ranges that places will sell.
My only other point, from purely ancedotal experience which will contract homedelete’s a bit – a significant portion of my circle got bit with the ‘buy a condo’ bug ~5-6 years back, and have been selling over the course of the past year. One actually a sale in Jan of a 2 bedroom that would probably get ripped apart on the site. They absolutely did not get top bubble pricing, but due to the length of holding did end up with a 5 figure chunk to sink back into their next place, along with savings. I doubt seriously that this transaction would hold up under the light of an investment, but that wasn’t the point. They had a place to live, sold it, and now have another place to live that is bigger.
I’m in my early thirties.
Peace.
On 2516 N Seminary:
It is NOT landlocked. There is a small ally behind the property. You can see the curb cut on Lill and cars parked to the east of the buildings on the other side of the alley in this Google satellite photo:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=2516+n+seminary,+chicago,+il&sll=41.934949,-87.648126&sspn=0.010344,0.021694&ie=UTF8&ll=41.927769,-87.656444&spn=0.000647,0.001356&t=h&z=20
And I agree with Bob. I’d prefer the SFH that needs a little work to this condo. Especially because this thing has needed major work within 8 years of construction. In the SFH, at least the repairs and improvements aren’t going to fix developer errors/negligence.
good detective work tftinchi. i checked on the sidwell map and it confirms that there is an alley there. However, looking at your google map, it seems that the back yard is less than 20′ deep (if you scale next to the adjoining garage, which i assume to be 20′ x 20′).
My guess is that if you can fit a car it would have to be diagonally. I wonder what adds more value – a small back yard – or a single outdoor parking space taking up most of that backyard?
but in general i totally agree with you – i’d take a sfr over a comparably priced condo any day of the week. And i’d much rather take an old condo than a new conversion/construction condo. The new construction condos seem so lame to me.
The condo we’re supposed to be talking about here, 2720 dayton, does seem a little nicer than some due to width of the unit. i hate narrow.
Anon(TFO),
My place was 3 years old and required $3500 in repairs to the HVAC system…both on the AC and Heating side. Thank castlebar-graystone for their incorrect installation & of course using Goodman equipment which is considered “disposable” by most HVAC techs.
Oh did I mention too all the windows leaked in water (in multiple units)?
Yep, Castlebar-graystone = quality construction. There’s about a dozen more defects I could list but I don’t want to go off topic too far. My place was over 400k too… what a deal.
“My place was 3 years old and required $3500 in repairs to the HVAC system…”
Sorry to hear that. I wasn’t disbeleiving that it needed to be done; I just took it as a sign that there may well be other deficiencies, as you’ve noted happened in your place.
CastebarMess,
We’re renting in a similarly aged unit that has the same leaking problems (and others). Makes us extremely leery about buying something from that era.
shortwithhighceilings —
In my opinion, I totally agree with your leery-ness. During that era, they slapped this stuff together in like 6 months for (what feels like) $45 and sold it for $450,000. I have spent well over $5000 fixing things (and the $ isn’t even the issue as much as the sheer number of things I constantly fix – 1/2 of it I do myself for “free” anyway) in a 3 year old place that never should have had these kinds of defects. There are even code violations that an architect friend of mine pointed out (missed by all inspectors of course). My parents’ house in the burbs (4x the size of my place) was built in the 1970s and they have had fewer problems than me in the first 10 years they lived there (plus they had much more space for things to go wrong). My home inspector was awful though as well… even still, he couldn’t predict the furnace would just break. It would’ve been nice if he said Goodman is the worst brand of HVAC as that would’ve saved me a lot, but whatever. I am very skeptical of the construction from the 03-08 era based on my experience and my friends’ experiences. I think it’s a topic nobody wants to talk about bc it would futher devalue property in the city.
Anon tfo – sorry i didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing w/ you– just emphasizing the point that the const quality of this era (and of particular developers) can be really poor, despite the price.
It will be rather interesting to see when they start tearing down the stuff built during this era..like all the stuff that sprung up in the 50s that is no longer on our landscape. I predict these places won’t even last as long as some of the current mortgages on them.