We Love Terraces: 936 W. Madison in the West Loop
Large private terraces are big selling points for many condo units and this one attached to a top floor 2-bedroom unit at 936 W. Madison in the heart of the West Loop fits the bill.
There’s no one above you (so no cigarette butts or errant cheeseburgers raining down on your head) and it looks like it runs the length of the unit (the living room and at least one of the bedrooms.)
This building was built in 1998.
Ron Knoll at Saffron Realty has the listing. See more pictures here.
Unit #5F: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, no square footage listed
- Sold in October 1998 for $291,500
- Sold in April 2002 for $380,000 (parking included)
- Sold in April 2006 for $405,000 (parking included)
- Currently listed for $430,000 (parking included)
- Assessments of $380 a month
- Taxes of $5577
- W/D in the unit
- Central Air
- Bedroom 1: 15×13
- Bedroom 2: 14×11
Love it! I wish it were within my budget.
Ditto
Same here! I was just in this neighborhood last night with my daughter. It needs a few more amenities (the hood, not the unit), but totally livable, etc.
Dear seller, please drop the price to 225,000 and I will buy it AND bake you some cookies!
Nice unit. Still a little spendy for a 2/2 though.
according to CCRD the owner has plenty of room to breathe on the mortgage; this is not an FB. If I wanted to buy this unit I would hold out for a price reduction because there is no way they’re going to get above the ’06 price. If this owner were smart (and by definition purchasing in ’06 was not – even I saw an enormous bubble in ’06) he would start reducing by 5% every few weeks until sold. there’s plenty of breathing room on the mortgage.
Insanity on the price, but otherwise a nice unit.
Do people not read the newspaper or watch the news? We have just experienced one of the largest housing bubbles, and now busts, in history and everyone still thinks they are entitled to appreciation. But here is a question I saw posted on trulia that sums this all up; “What is the typical rate of appreciation for the Lincoln Park area?” As if depreciation is not even a possibility.
Nice looking unit and the terrace is to die for. I don’t think it is terribly over priced. It is priced so that anyone could buy it with 5 or 10% down and still get conforming financing. Large bedrooms and a true living/dining room combo that is large enough to fit a real dining room table plus the terrace make it very attractive. I think it will sell relatively quickly
It might be 1500 sqft without the terrace, so why wouldn’t the realtor put that on the listing… That would seem like a positive! Is it that hard to use a tape measure? I guess with that price the realtor thinks its still 2005…
Nice unit (crazy-nice terrace), but it is small. Total listed sq. ft. is 931 (not counting bathrooms). You can find studios that big. And for a 2/2 that is really small.
I can forgive small, but not when it is listed at nearly 10% over its 06 price. Unless the lofted ceilings and One Big Room make this place _seem_ really big, it will have a lot of trouble selling at this price.
Aaaaah so that’s why the realtor didn’t list the sqft!
It’s probably around 1100 sq. ft. total. Sorry, a nice terrace doesn’t make this worth $390 per square foot.
My guess is this will have to drop to around $350K to have any chance of selling.
Hope that’s not too negative a comment for the “everything is beautiful” contingent.
Definitely nice features but the neighborhood would worry me. there are quite a few new high-rises in the area that will have units coming on the market in the next 1-2 years and every time i walk there w/ the dog, it seems dead.
$375K w/ parking
Woops forgot about the parking — I agree with ChiGuy $375K with parking.
was this building built in 98 or was it renovated into condos then. hard to tell, but the pics make it look older.
The interesting thing about the price history is how little increase there was betweeen the 2002 sale price of $380,000 and the 2006 sale price of $405,000, a 6.5% increase during what most would call the biggest bubble years.
I’m not saying chicago didn’t participate in the bubble, but i see lots of examples of only moderate appreciation during the bubble years. makes me think the correction won’t be as severe as many are predicting (depending on the area etc – and i expect west loop to be harder hit than most).
Yes, the terrace is nice, albeit the ubiquitous cheap-looking concrete pavers need replaced.
As for the layout/ entrance, walking into the kitchen makes it seem more like a service entrance than a main entrance. Plus, the kitchen is too small. If you have to have a tacky bookcase hold glassware, that’s a sad commentary on kitchen square footage. Speakin’ of… where’s the dishwasher? In teh island taking up mroe cabinet space?
Plus, the present owner might also want to rethink the knife rack bolted into the wall. It might work for them, but it looks really bad as a selling point (if you’re into suburban oak cabinets and the ever-present granite counter tops; which I am NOT).
Bottom line: OVERPRICED by $100K- $125K.
Wait you mean that a knife rack on a wall would actually have an effect on the selling of a unit? Seriously?
I think it looks bad too, but what next his garden hose isn’t wound up correctly.
HD “even I saw an enormous bubble in ‘06”
What did you do to take advantage of the bubble you saw? Surely, a smart guy like you made some investments so that you could reap the benefits when the bubble bursted.
I’m wondering why you still work.
It could be said that it supports the theory that many want to first and foremost buy an image, not shelter.
MADLY, I thought you retired and left us?
Regardless what else HD didn’t do with his knowledge, not buying a condo was right on the money.
You seem envious.
If I was a smarter man, I’d have bought puts on banking stocks. But unlike HD, I didn’t see the financial crash. He apparently did, so I’m wondering what ACTION he took.
I’ll be gone soon enough.
You have exclaimed your financial superiority over the likes of us here many times.
The real puzzler is how you missed the most obvious of all credit bubbles?
Care to fill us in how that happened?
I can’t get past the hideous spiral CF bulbs in the track lights… If you’re gonna sell a place, at least have enough sense to use the appropriate type of bulbs.
MADFLY, I’m not going to pretend to be an internet millionaire:
I saw the bubble because I have extensive exposure to other people’s credit and financial situations. Years ago lawyers in my firm said “this will not end well.” I was sending e-mails of zellman’s ARM reset chart shortly after it came out (jan 07 IIRC). I guess I’m lucky that I have access to this stuff and an objective point of view helps too. Here’s what I did:
1) stopped putting money in stocks;
2) transferred to cash;
3) developed and expanded BK practice from within my firm;
4) rented instead of bought;
5) refinanced my private student loans into a variable rate instead of a fixed rate (expecting an eventual ZIRP – which occurred)
6) kept my powder dry: it’s about return of capital not return on capital
7) paid off a good chunk of student loans;
8) worked hard to set up a sustainable area of business to last though what I foresaw as the long upcoming recession.
Shorting financials and flipping real estate and the like is more akin to gambling. I used the bubble to get my own financial house in order; everyone else’s house of cards is crashing – hard – but mine is solid like a rock.
I missed the credit bubble. I missed the tech bubble too. I should have shorted CROC and TASR. I had gut feelings but wasn’t confident enough in it to put my money in it. I’ll miss other things in the future as well. I don’t pretend to KNOW these things. But there are those who proclaim things were so obvious, yet did… nothing.
The main reason I do well financially is not because I am smart, but because I take action, whether right or wrong. That’s MADFLY’s wisdom for the day.
“mine is solid like a rock”
body like a rock; mind like a meatloaf.
I hate to whine, but is it really asking so much for a realtor’s web site to simply present nice big pictures? This one is trying to pass postage stamps off as proper shots. And if that’s not annoying enough, the “Ken Burns effect” that continues to function even when you hit pause is downright obnoxious.
That being said… I predict $360, tops.
HD- At the time, did you foresee the extent of the recession that is occurring now (because your forecast is pretty dim)?
We all have different risk tolerances, yes, but if I had your insight and confidence in the prediction, I definitely would have shorted financials (using puts on bank stocks). You only have to be right once to make out like a bandit.
I generally missed the tech bubble; then again I was 22 or 23 years old when it burst. I was more concerned with what kind of 6 pack to drink than whether I should sell or buy pets.com; but the one thing that did strike me as odd was buying cat litter or dog food over the internet….and also, I vividly remember having a conversation in 1998 in my friend’s apartment and the three of us (two of whom were business majors) were saying: OK, there are all these tech companies, but how are they making money? They’re getting VC but how are they going to make money?? The consensus was that we didn’t know if or when they would ever make money , so, we walked down irving park road and bought some beer instead.
It became more clear with time. I recognized the severity but not the velocity.
“HD- At the time, did you foresee the extent of the recession that is occurring now (because your forecast is pretty dim)? “
*5) refinanced my private student loans into a variable rate instead of a fixed rate (expecting an eventual ZIRP – which occurred)*
HD-How did you do that and what is a ZIRP?
“But there are those who proclaim things were so obvious, yet did… nothing.”
I’m sure there were. Doing nothing was certainly better than buying condos.
You missed the RE bubble, too, MADFLY.
The money-making part, anyway.
LOL. Pets.com was ridiculous. Tech bubble seems so obvious now. So does the web domain business – if I’d have only registered sex.com. $14 Million. You tube? Such a simple concept. $1.5 Billion.
You only have to be right once.
MADFLY,
It didn’t take a genius to see tha there was a housing bubble. I remember in 2005 when in grad school receiving a copy of The Economist that week with a picture of a house falling on a guy and the headline was “After the Fall..”
As far as buying puts or shorting the stocks, they present issues on their own. I didn’t have a sufficient capital position to make a lot of $ and with options they are time dependent, so if you don’t time the decline extremely well they don’t payoff. With shorting stocks you could come under a short squeeze that force’s your broker to sell out your position in the interim, even if you are ultimately proven correct it does no good. Theres an old saying regarding shorting that be prepared: the market can remain irrational far longer than an investor can remain solvent.
Predicting the timing perfectly is wholly different from seeing we were in a real estate bubble. Instead I voted with my dollars by NOT buying real estate in the 2006-2008 timeframe, despite being able to do so. My ernest money is not going to compete with the yahoo money of zero/low down payment loans.
Instead I will buy from an overextended yahoo or their bank in a couple years time and get a much nicer/larger place for my dollar.
No more funny money yahoo loans = no more risk. Get it? The idiots who should’ve NEVER been able to own a piece of real estate now need to be purged out of the system and this will take some time. No way am I taking action by going long real estate now. My extra cash currently is going into 80% CDs and 20% a bear fund. 😀
Amen G. Buffet called it “capital preservation”.
Sure one could short financials, if one saw it coming. However in order to profit from it, one needs to time it right too. If one was too early to the party, one would loose his shirt easily despite of being right 100%.
Remember “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” Just ask the poor souls that shorted Fannie and Freddie too early and had their asses handed to them.
“You missed the RE bubble, too, MADFLY.
The money-making part, anyway.”
Admit it G. You love me.
+1 Bob.
As someone who learned that lesson well in 06-07, I just thank my lucky stars for ’08.
Nope, MADFLY, ever since you threatened to crack my skull I have only wanted to insure that you remember me.
That way, when times get tough for you in the future you can rest assured they are well-deserved and that someone is pleased.
*5) refinanced my private student loans into a variable rate instead of a fixed rate (expecting an eventual ZIRP – which occurred)*
HD-How did you do that and what is a ZIRP?
And enough with the skull cracking….
There are plenty of ways to make money off the bust. There are ways to make money off REOs, foreclosures, bankruptcies, real estate litigation, etc. Shorting stocks and gambling in the market is only one way to make money. Fortunately the barriers to entry in my line of work is quite high – a law license – whereas shorting stocks requires little more than cash and leverage and good timing.
hey jon, maybe this will help:
http://tours5.vht.com/Viewer/PhotoGallery.aspx?ListingID=1192433&Style=STD
Education finance partners put together these securitized student loan packages and sold them to the public. In 05 and 06 they were offering to consolidate private loans like sallie mae and nelnet, which at the time were like prime + 4 or something, into the variable rate at 3-month libor + 2.0 or fixed at a higher rate . Today I pay 3.33%. Education finance partners went chap 7 last year during the credit crunch because no one was buying their products.
ZIRP is zero interest rate policy. Japan has been at or near this for years. WE are pretty much there too. The feds reduce the rate to zero to encourage borrowing and stimulate the economy. I figured when things blowed up we’d be back near zero and locking in a fixed rate near the top of 17 months of increases would be dumb. My private loans have a lower interest rate than my federals, which were also consolidated during one of the lowest interest rates environments.
Jason (tfo) on April 16th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
*5) refinanced my private student loans into a variable rate instead of a fixed rate (expecting an eventual ZIRP – which occurred)*
HD-How did you do that and what is a ZIRP?”
G- you really are an evil rascal.
I will miss your banter.
How did I know it would go to zero? Greenspan did it once before, lowering the rate to 1% and keeping it there for a long time. I figured that it would happen again. It’s sort of like blowing another line of coke to come off a crash and before you know it you’re using all the time.
HD,
I’d bet net neutral on that 3.33% debt. Yeah it sounds like a great rate, until you consider that you can get a 30-year mortgage rate as low as 4.375% currently with points buydown and this is likely to go lower. The after tax cost of that mortgage debt would be on par with your 3.33. The thing is your 3.33% is fixed and with deflation your real rate could wind up being 5.33%.
I guess it depends on when you think housing will bottom. If you’re thinking the out years (2013+) it might make sense to pay down the 3.33% debt now as you’d be paying off a fixed amount and still have time to save for a downpayment.
Me? My only remaining debt are student loans fixed at 1.625%. Armchair advice from elders is to stretch out payments and let inflation eat away the real balance. However in a lost decade type environment I’m not so sure. I guess it depends how low I expect mortgage rates to go. Will have to read up on Japan to see how low they went there.
From reading Mish’s Global Economic blog it appears deflation is here when we back out the funny stuff the government does with regard to including housing as a component cost of CPI. In fact I now think the computation of the CPI is fatally flawed in that it does not include housing prices but rather only rents! LOL.
Heres Mish:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/04/deflation-has-gone-global.html
Looks like HD’s real interest rate is 8.33% if we re-calculate CPI to including true housing costs, not the contrived “Owners Equivalent Rent”. Last time I checked you can’t pay half your mortgage and include an asterisk telling your banker it should suffice as its your “Owners Equivalent Rent”.
Don’t worry about those pesky student loans, just get a shitty job that doesn’t pay very well and Obama will miraculously make them dissapear!
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/15/news/economy/loan_forgiveness/
Bob, I can’t get private loans cheaper than 3.33%. They don’t offer them. Anywhere. No lender will give you rates that cheap. I can’t compare my SL interest rates to those of a mortgage; they’re two different things. I can walk away from a house, go BK and be at zero. I (for the most part) cannot ever walk away from my student loans; they will follow me for life.
Also Bob, I was in the inflation camp for years but in the last year or so I moved into the deflation camp. I’m probably 25% inflation 75% deflation. Nobody knows the answer but an answer is emerging: japanese style deflation, a percent here, a percent there, for the next 10 years.
> Don’t worry about those pesky student loans, just get a shitty job that doesn’t pay very well and Obama will miraculously make them dissapear!
Yeah but you have to get a job with the government. Ick.
Gubmint is the way to go right now. Secure job, steady hours, probably unionized, great benefits, PENSION guaranteed by law (unless IL goes BK)…..We are the United States of France. The only good jobs are gubmint jobs….I hope you know somebody or you’re somebody’s somebody or you’re somebody who know….or else you’re screwed.
Yeah brad there are CTA El drivers and city garbage men with no more than a highschool education who earn 60k/year have full benefits and a guaranteed pension. Their risk of layoff is much smaller than in private sector and they are guaranteed 3-4% raises until they retire and these are not tied to performance.
And you’re saying working for the government is bad?
the bureaucracy sucks in gov, that I will admit, but with the economy shedding jobs at a rate of 500,000 a month, and a prez more concerned with destroying the private sector; my philosophy is – if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Again, pension (in some cases MULTIPLE pensions), full benefits, great time off, unionized, guaranteed 3-4% a year, job security, not based on performance, 9 to 5 hours, and a tax payer dumb enough to foot the bill (everytime!)… gov has become a win-win proposition for everyone.
–unless IL goes BK–
States can’t go bankrupt. Cities/municipalities can. States can default, but not go bankrupt through any Federal court action.
I did not know that. I don’t do a whole lot of Chap 9 but who does?
There’s actually a rumor percolating that some BK courts and/or Circuits may be open to broadly construing “municipality” to include a state…
I am so split on decks… I had a really nice one (visually) but I didn’t like it & hopefully the next owner will enjoy it far more than I did. First, if I wanted to lay out, it’s not like there was any privacy from 20 other people who have higher decks. Also, the bugs up there were out of control. The wasp nests required professional removal, and some of these nests were not on my property (next roof over or neighbor’s trees) so there was nothing I could do about them. At night, if you turn on the faintest light, you get a swarm of bugs like something out of a Stephen King movie. Also, when I did lay out, all the other people’s AC units were 10 feet from me so it was not relaxing to hear them turn on and off. I’d take my old highrise roof deck over what I had… though I kind of like this deck from the pic. Also, every time I would go out there I’d walk through so many spider web threads that I would have to go back inside and wash my face. Even my friends didn’t like it in person but they loved it in pictures (and in theory.)
Wow Sabrina – Did you see 2014 N Sheffield? This place went under contract after 15 days on the marker. Was it priced low? It sold for $60k more than the 2005 sales price of $700k.
Let’s see the headline Sabrina… “Lincoln Park Appreciates 10% since 2005?” I never knew the market was still rising.
Hey Sabrina – Did you see 2040 N Sedgwick? This place was purchased in 2004 for $683k and just went under contract with an asking price of $820k. HOLY COW! What is going on here? I thought the market crashed and all prices are down way below 2005 prices?
You better headline this one…
Thanks, bunt.
The only thing Heitman’s comments prove is that there are still some greater fools left. I suppose there will always be people that haven’t read a news article in three years, or just can’t figure out how news applies to real life, or perhaps just believe whatever a commissioned salesman tells them.
The buyers of the properties listed above probably paid sticker price for their last car and got the $400 “rustproofing” along with it. A few dumb people does not a market recovery make. The only real surprise is that these buyers were somehow smart enough to accumulate a lot of money, since banks aren’t doing zero down on $800,000 properties anymore. Too bad they were just looking for someone to separate the money from the fool.
Pete,
Of course, you could open your mind to an alternative that the properties Steve chose to highlight were the right fit for the buyers. I wouldn’t be willing to say that two properties are proof of a reversal in the trend, but if I was looking to move into a home for a long time horizon and the property had everything I wanted purchasing doesn’t make me a fool. I’m only a fool if I purchase with questionable financial footing and intent of not just living in a place but speculating on appreciation.
I get the rental argument; what I don’t see is the acceptance that places you can purchase and places you could rent are not always on parity. Armitage & Sedwick or Armitage & Sheffield? For a large number of people those are prime addresses and command a premium. I’ve lived there, and while I’m not willing to pony up the premium I wouldn’t condemn someone’s choice, much as I’m done condemning the Naperville premium.
Don’t be fooled. There are plenty of buyers out there who do have the downpayment and want to buy.
They still believe that the last 10 years is what is going to happen in the next 10. The housing obsession is alive and well.
Not enough people in Chicago have friends or family who have lost thousands on their home purchases (yet) so they feel no fear. These buyers keep telling me, “the market will recover in a few years” and they’ll be fine to sell their condos for a profit when they want to.
I actually don’t think that if you’re buying a property to live in for 10 to 15 years (at least) that it’s a bad time to be buying- given low interest rates. But how many people are really going to stay in the property that long? (especially condos?)
We’re back to 2004-2005 prices in most of the city now. That’s a five year holding period. But I’m now seeing some properties that are back to 2001-2002 prices. So those owners owned for 8 years and are still going to probably take a loss.
Brutal.