Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Yesterday the Tribune reported:
About 1/3 under contract
6 of 21 uber luxury units are under contract, including an $8.6 million penthouse
Many of the buyers are believed to be foreign, as predicted
Construction financing is expected to close in 45 to 60 days
Keep a close eye on this, guys. If Vista is a success we may see a lot more Chinese money "parked" locally, and perhaps many more high profile condo proposals
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There's no hard info that I've seen whatsoever thus far on the depth of the foreign buyer market here. You misread that article. There was one sentiment-driven wishy-washy statement from a local broker that seemed to suggest (in all probability misleadingly) that there's been a half-decent amount of foreign interest/purchase activity. Potentially on the contrary, a statement from Sean Linnane of Magellan in the Trib article (
http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...302-story.html) is very suggestive that the market for units in the tower is actually primarily local (which makes more sense to me):
"We're surprised by the depth of the Chicago market. Most buyers are Chicago buyers — a lot buying second homes; often with a place in the suburbs."
In other words, no huge change from the luxury downtown Chicago new construction condo market in the boom of the naughts.
Do not be surprised if there is not in fact a deep market that develops for Chinese (I don't mean the ethnicity, I mean capital originating from mainland China) purchases of uber-luxury Chicago residential condos, new construction or otherwise. First of all, do not overlook the important widespread expectation that Chinese authorities will further clamp down on outbound capital this year. That could have a huge impact on residential investment in markets (NY, SF, LA, Vancouver, Toronto, etc) that actually do enjoy strong capital inflows into for-sale residential markets from China. Secondly, a relative lack of supply constraints more than compensates for some improvement in Chicago's global visibility and the 'safe harbor' status of investing in 1) the US in general, and 2) Chicago's less cyclically-amplified market....
Finally, it would be a very admirable feat if Magellan is in fact able to land its debt financing for this project in the next couple months. That's awesome that they are that close, and I'm pulling for them. That stated, I'm not impressed with the unit sales velocity here of late. It seems that it may have taken at least 7-8 months to move from 25% of units under contract to 33% of units under contract. While not necessarily problematic, that's less than swift, for certain....