Jun 4, 2009

On the Market

On the Market: A Chicago Price That Trumps Trump

List Price: $2,055,000
The Property: From this three-bedroom, four-bath condo on the 73rd floor of Trump Hotel & Tower, the view is spectacular—and relatively cheap. Sure, it’s priced at a little over $2 million, but that’s a full $1.2 million less than the developers want for the same view, and the same floor plan, four flights up.

According to Jay Devlin, that agent currently handling this listing, the 73rd-floor unit is being sold by investors who bought it at a low preconstruction price several years ago. Their expectation was that the condo’s value would go up dramatically by the time it was completed and they took possession. But when that did happen, in late April, the market had fallen instead—and the investors’ resale price expectations have dropped accordingly. In fact, they have cut the asking price by another $140,000, or six percent, since Devlin showed me around the condo. (You will hear him refer to a higher price—$2,195,000—in the accompanying video.)

“They aren’t trying to make a killing,” Devlin says. “They know it’s a different market today; they want to make their money back.” Devlin would not say what the investors paid for the unit, and I was not able to find that information in public records.

The Trump organization, meanwhile, has not dropped its $3,292,289 asking price for the comparable unit on the 77th floor.

The condo, with a fan-shaped layout, has ten-foot-tall windows facing east, west, and south; they take in everything from Lake Michigan and the South Side coastline to Millennium Park’s Cloud Gate (the “Bean”), the Chicago River, and the church spires of the West Side. There’s not much that could be added by being four more floors up. Nothing’s going to block these views for a long time.

Price Points: Devlin’s office, the Tricia Fox Group at Keller Williams, is representing several other investor-owned units at Trump, including a 49th-floor one-bedroom condo priced at $650,000 and a 2,700-square-foot condo on the 41st floor priced at $1,999,000. According to Devlin, both of those units were bought by investors at early, lower prices; as a result, they are now priced below comparable floor plans still available from the developers.

Listing Agent: Jay Devlin, Keller Williams, 312-286-3177; jaydevlin@gcchicago.com

Posted at 10:10 AM in On the Market | Permalink

 Email  Print  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Comments  Feed

Subscribe to Deal Estate : Deal Estate