Vintage Beauty on the Lake: 3400 N. Lake Shore Drive
They just don’t build them like this anymore. And we love to look at them.
This 4-bedroom, 4000 square foot vintage unit in 3400 N. Lake Shore Drive in Lakeview still has the original mahogany millwork, plaster and paneling.
It also has all the modern conveniences: central air, washer/dryer and parking.
What more can you ask for?
Meredith Meserow at Koenig & Strey has the listing. See the listing and more pictures here.
Unit #8EF: 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 4000 square feet
- Sold in September 2000 for $852,500
- Sold in April 2002 for $1.05 million
- Sold in June 2005 for $1.425 million
- Currently listed for $2.25 million
- Assessments of $2300 a month
- Taxes of $18,000
- Parking included
- Central Air
- 2 Fireplaces
- Listing says the master bath was recently renovated
I WANT THIS PLACE!!!
Somebody in here tell me where I can get a No Doc IO 40-year Pay Option Arm loan with no reset for ten years!! I must have this place!!
Seriously, this is a gorgeous apartment and $852K does not sound out of line for it. I looked at a couple of units in this building when it was first converted, and they didn’t look anything like this- they had been rehabbed and clean-walled to death. Very few units at 3400 actually are as intact and beautiful as this. \
The Countrywide office at LaSalle and Chicago is still open, they should be able to hook you up.
Laura,
I think you got a little too excited, look at the list price again.
Laura, look at the assessment fee too.
Yep, with the assessment and taxes, $852K does not sound out of line. $2.25mm on the other hand …
Assessments of $2300 a month and taxes of $18,000 are not out of line for a place worth 2.25 million, the problem with this place at 3400 north lsd is that it is only a 1.5 million dollar place that is ‘listed’ for 2.25 million.
OK, I really DID get a little excited.
This is beautiful, but $2.25M is a little out of line. It might be worth $1M, but I can’t think even this exceptional place is worth more than it was three years ago.
If it couldn’t sell for more than $852K in 2000, I can’t imagine it being worth more than $1M now. This seller wants 300% of his 2000 price.
Additionally, the market for apartments like this might have contracted a bit in the past year or so. It has become MUCH more difficult to get jumbo loans and you must have a greater downstroke. Worse, the jobs that pay the incomes needed to own a place like this comfortably are not as easy to get as perhaps they were then. Only a tiny fraction of Lakeview and Lincoln Park home buyers qualify to buy.
This is what real estate “experts” like Heitman and Zekas stubbornly refuse to acknowledge. Real estate prices have to go down across the board, because the high salaries and easy financing just aren’t there anymore. The supply of high dollar homes is so much greater than the number of truly qualified buyers.
$3800 a MONTH in tax+assessments is the equivalent of paying for a $700000 mortgage at 5.25%!!!!!!
WOW.
no pics of the view? must be lackluster
Its too bad you can’t see the dust these old places accumulate from the realtor shots. These places are dust bunny heavens.
Second CH’s observation. Most of the rooms look like they face directly into brick walls. $2.25M? Crazy.
The view on this one is not great throughout the unit. However, the space and layout of it is very nice. I have not shown this particular unit, but I have shown others and the building is very nice. I think the seller did a tasteful job of incorporating some new to go along with the original architecture. I do not think it is worth 2.25M. And the assesments on this building are high but they include everything. For the square feet you are getting, it is not really that unreasonable. Taxes are normal for the amount of square feet you get along with the price range. I think if you could get this for around a million less than what they are asking, it would be a good deal.
It’s 4000 sq ft. 1 million would be way cheap.
“1 million would be way cheap”
And $2.25mm is way expensive. $1.75mm would be much more like it.
$999,000 sounds like a decent price. The economy is worse than when this property was purchased.
It isn’t that there aren’t craftsman who can do this kind of millwork, it is that labor is no longer cheap as it was when this place was built. Nowadays, you get what you pay for which is why almost all new construction has no soul.
Beautiful and rare find in Chicago. To whomever commented on the dust, get a Rainbow vac. Sometimes the wood stinks though, unfortunately. And too much uncontrolled, violent crime in the area now, not to mention the gangs taking over the waterfront right there.
“It isn’t that there aren’t craftsman who can do this kind of millwork, it is that labor is no longer cheap as it was when this place was built. Nowadays, you get what you pay for which is why almost all new construction has no soul.”
There’s plenty of new construction homes and condos in this city being built for the very rich (as this was built for.) And NONE of it looks like this. They have the money to hire the craftsmen and still don’t do it.
Oh- and if the labor was so cheap in 1922, why didn’t ALL apartments look like this? Why weren’t the homes in Southport, the working man’s cottages, built like this if it was a dime a dozen?
Because it wasn’t. And still isn’t.