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  #841  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2018, 10:36 PM
the urban politician the urban politician is offline
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^ Agree completely.

But this forum is full of people who view the NYC style of urbanism as the standard to shoot for.

So we have an uphill climb
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  #842  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2018, 10:45 PM
Halsted & Villagio Halsted & Villagio is offline
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^ No worries my friend. We will get there together

And in case you were wondering, my initial post was not aimed at you or your previous comments
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  #843  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2018, 3:55 PM
Halsted & Villagio Halsted & Villagio is offline
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Originally Posted by left of center View Post
Back when Chicago was growing by leaps and bounds, the east coast elite were horrified by what they saw as the sprawl and suburban development of Chicago... residential buildings set back several feet from the sidewalk, a parkway of grass and trees between the sidewalk and the street... a small grassy front yard... these all went against the development patterns of cities like Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, etc. at the time. (Ironically today this would be considered dense and vibrant neighborhood development in much of the country.) I don't recall where I read this tidbit exactly, I assume it was Nature's Metropolis, or City of the Century; both excellent books that I highly recommend.

Quite frankly this development style, which blends greenery with attractive urbanism, strikes a great balance that provides for a great quality of life to residents. That, and alleys. God bless alleys.
Excellent post btw.

In honor of the very good post by Marothisu where he used an excellent analogy.... its like in football where you have a team full of big players... the biggest players available... and you have another team with next tier size players but it is team with speed... something the big team does not have. If you try to play the size/power game you are going to lose. So you play to your strengths... size and SPEED... something the big team can never match.

The key is the get them to play on your terms... to your strengths... not their terms and strengths.

Not as good as Marothisu's analogy but you get my point. In our lifetimes we will likely never be a city of 8 million people... but also in our lifetimes NY will never have the breathable space that we have. Our game is size and speed vis-à-vis density and space. We lose when we play the size game. They lose when we play the size and breathable space game.

Our breathable space is a strength... not a weakness.
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  #844  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2018, 8:41 PM
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Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
I think we are stuck in generation of urbanists that views the New York vernacular as the "textbook standard" of urbanism that everything else needs to be compared against. In other words, if New York has it, then all others must do it the same way or else they are lacking in some fashion. That frame of mind even predominates this forum.

I don't know if that will ever change, but I would say Chicago's less intense brand of urbanism and its alleys kind of get little appreciation for this reason.
Read AJ Liebling for a perfect distillation of this...
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  #845  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 1:36 AM
emathias emathias is offline
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Jane Jacobs is good to read because every urbanist reads her, so reading her allows one to understand references to her work. She should not, however, be considered "the best" for how urban form should be designed or implemented because some ideas of hers are hugely problematic and fail to account for important ideas in the space.

Speaking of books, one of my favorite about Chicago, is The Pig and the Skyscraper: Chicago, A History of Our Future, by Marco D'Eramo, an Italian who came and lived in Lakeview for a while. The book was originally written in Italian and then translated to English, which I think makes it all the more interesting since it was targeted at Italians.

I like Chicago. Correction, I *love* Chicago. That said, I think the City should do more to intentionally plan itself, and have actual architecture standards, in certain parts, especially downtown.
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  #846  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 2:02 PM
the urban politician the urban politician is offline
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Why are metro Chicago’s home values so weak?

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...wth-high-taxes
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  #847  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 2:19 PM
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To be honest, I think the city has done a lot to plan things better and introduce local charm and site-specific elements in streetscaping. Why do we love walking around Paris or Rome? Because every bridge, every doorway, every bench or light pole is a work of art. Chicago is (slowly) moving in that direction from the utilitarian machine-city it used to be. The architecture here has always been great or at least good, but outside of the lakefront and the boulevard ring, our public realm was dreary as all hell.
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  #848  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 4:22 PM
IrishIllini IrishIllini is offline
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Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
Why are metro Chicago’s home values so weak?

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...wth-high-taxes
Buy low, sell high

We'll see what happens with the broader Chicagoland housing market. It may take quite a while for values across the region to return to new highs, but it'll happen.
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  #849  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 6:17 PM
Rizzo Rizzo is offline
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^ Agree. Though I’d say people are more concerned about property taxes increases disproportionately over taking property value increases. Plus, the benchmark example in that article isn’t the best. Yeah...ok 2007.

It depends on who you ask.

Since I bought my place last year, the market has demonstrated I can recover most of my closing costs and tax increases but if I look at a 10 year time frame the value has gone nowhere. The previous owners lost, but assuming values rise...even if just a little...I’m due to come out ahead.
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  #850  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 6:38 PM
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at the end of the day, a house is a place to live. if youre happy with the house and the neighborhood, thats whats most important IMO. too many people are treating real estate like a lottery or some sort of get rich quick scheme and apparently didnt learn their lessons from the last time. appreciation above inflation is nice, but its icing on the cake if it happens.
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  #851  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 8:09 PM
the urban politician the urban politician is offline
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Originally Posted by Via Chicago View Post
at the end of the day, a house is a place to live. if youre happy with the house and the neighborhood, thats whats most important IMO. too many people are treating real estate like a lottery or some sort of get rich quick scheme and apparently didnt learn their lessons from the last time. appreciation above inflation is nice, but its icing on the cake if it happens.
I definitely agree (At least when it comes to your own home). But it has to be very upsetting to sell one's home for less than they paid for it.
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  #852  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 9:09 PM
IrishIllini IrishIllini is offline
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I definitely agree (At least when it comes to your own home). But it has to be very upsetting to sell one's home for less than they paid for it.
That's a tough pill to swallow. I wonder if this is uniquely a SFH/distressed neighborhood phenomena. I'm not seeing many instances where condos are selling for less than they did before the crash. I'd figure most on the north/near west have mortgage payments that can be covered by market rents. I bought near the bottom, but I'm ~$400 below market rents for my mortgage.
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  #853  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 10:13 PM
Via Chicago Via Chicago is offline
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Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
I definitely agree (At least when it comes to your own home). But it has to be very upsetting to sell one's home for less than they paid for it.
i agree, but i think its also why one should be careful not to put themselves in the potential position to be house poor. so many people buy and/or rent at the maximum range of what their income allows, or what they get approved for. just because the bank says they will loan you 300k dosent mean you have to buy a 300k house. and then they find themselves with zero wiggle room when the market dips, or a partner loses a job.
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  #854  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2018, 11:39 PM
marothisu marothisu is offline
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I did some research not long ago into building permits by metro area (via HUD) for both SFH and multi unit buildings every year from 2010 to 2017.

1) Only 14 metro areas out of 53 were at their peak for number of units permitted in multi unit buildings in 2017. One of those metro areas was Chicago - others include Seattle, Denver, SF, Portland, Charlotte, etc. Places like Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, Houston, DC, Austin, Boston, etc hit their peaks either in 2014 or 2015 (Austin was 2013). NYC is weird because it had a massive peak in 2015 but otherwise 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2017 are all in the same kind of range. DC is about the same as it was at its peak but still a little lower.

Chicago area had the 5th most units permitted for 2017 and 8th highest if you add up 2015-2017, even though it was in the bottom 3rd as far as MSA population growth goes from 2010 to 2016. It beat out areas like San Francisco, Boston, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, Philadelphia, etc. The San Francisco MSA (this isn't counting San Jose MSA) outgained Chicago in population by 6X yet Chicago is still outperforming as far as units in multi unit buildings is concerned.

2) Chicago was ranked 20th highest (out of 53) in number of Single Family Homes issued in 2017, but still ahead the likes of San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Portland, Philadelphia, etc. It was ranked 19th in total from 2015 to 2017 still above the likes of San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Minneapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, etc. Again, SF MSA outgained Chicago MSA by 6X, but yet Chicago still out gained SF MSA in number of new construction SFH permits issued in this general time period.

Most MSAs were at their peaks in 2017 for this.



If you look at employment data too, you'll see that Chicago's unemployment rate didn't start taking a dip until a year or two after a lot of other places. To me, it seems like the Chicago area is on a delay and I wouldn't be surprised to see the house prices go up a little from here on for a little bit. At the same time though, what's weighting the city down are a lot of areas that are pretty depressed like Englewood where you can get a property for dirt cheap.


With that being said, a lot of people use Case-Shiller Index without understanding what it measures. There are some things where sales are excluded. In some ways what they measure is fine - if you buy a play now, what sort of increase might you see in 5 years time if you don't invest anything major into it? I guess that applies to a lot of people but at the same time I'd think there were more factors into the price than just constant quality.

Some things specific about CSI:
a) Any property that was last sold as a different type from the current type is not counted. So for example, all those places in Chicago being bought as multi family units and then being renovated and converted as SFH? Not counted at all in this.
b) Any property that is bought and then re-sold within 6 months is not counted in the index.
c) It's a weighted index. Properties are weighted based on the time period between sales - so a house that has an interval of 2 years is weighted higher than a house that has an interval of 5 years.
d) Properties that are deemed to be more "constant quality" are given higher weights. That means if a house sells for a certain amount too much over what it was bought for, it's assumed it underwent renovation and therefore not "constant quality" and weighted lower.


Case in point - there's a lot of things in the index that can be dinged against Chicago in particular considering how prevalent buying up a multi unit building is and then converting to SFH - those aren't even counted. All the major remodel projects are given less weight too. For these reasons, I take the CSI with a grain of salt if just looking at a specific area and what the increase of cost is. An entire area may be dotted with gut rehabs and totally change the price - the properties which weren't changed might end up being a lesser percentage than people realize.

It's complicated, but then there's also the issue that even if you see a nice increase on price after doing "nothing" to your property, you may still have lost money due to the interest accrued on your mortgage. To be honest, I think something that was divvied up by renovation and also age would be useful. For example in some areas like a Lincoln Park, a single family home that's not expensive and old may not sell better than a house less than 10 years old and worth more. I'd want to know in area X, if I buy a $300K home, will it increase or will spending $500K for a better, newer home yield me a higher return.
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Last edited by marothisu; Apr 2, 2018 at 11:59 PM.
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  #855  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 1:09 AM
the urban politician the urban politician is offline
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^ Fascinating stuff. It’s too bad that people and bloggers oversimplify. They see metro population and just assume that “this region is dying”

What I find fascinating is the sheer number of permitted units in Chicago despite population stagnation. That can only mean that large numbers of units are being built while other units are either being abandoned, or family sizes in those are declining.

This would fit the narrative of gentrification and black households leaving town.
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  #856  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 3:10 AM
marothisu marothisu is offline
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Yeah. I was really surprised, frankly, to see it above areas like SF, Boston, etc. The majority of the permits issued were in the city of Chicago as well. I think there's a lot at play here - we've seen the numbers for 6+ figure households and how Chicago gained the 3rd most from '10-'16 - beating out cities like Houston by something like 25,000 households even though Houston outgained Chicago in that same time period by just over 200,000 people. I think this plays a little into it - I'm thinking a lot of people coming into Chicago and some already there are having enough money to demand new housing.

At the same time, this is only counting new construction permits - not renovations. I am currently making a renovation map for actual renovations (I don't count stuff like a small bathroom or attic renovation - bigger ones). So far I have from mid July 2017 to present covered - it's hard to do this since there isn't standardized language being used. There are a bunch of renovations in areas you might not necessarily expect, or maybe where other people expect. Woodlawn, South Shore, Chatham, and Austin all have a number of renovations. So does Pilsen and the border of North Lawndale and South Lawndale kind of following nearby Ogden and the Pink Line as you go west. In fact, these areas all individually have more than an area like Wicker Park and just as many, if not more, than areas like Logan Square.

At the same time, I think a lot of the teardowns in the city that don't get rebuilt are in areas like Garfield Park, Englewood, West Englewood, etc. I think south lakefront areas like a South Chicago, South Shore, and Chatham have less vacant lots than most people may think if you were to take the whole thing into consideration. Woodlawn and Bronzeville are other stories, but as we know...Bronzeville is having a decent amount of new construction mostly on vacant lots and Woodlawn is seeing some. Woodlawn will be interesting once the Obama Library ramps up/opens. I think a lot of people may end up venturing down there, maybe end up driving around South Shore and realizing that there's actually some pretty nice areas of South Shore that could easily pass for parts of places like Lakeview.

Hopefully in a few weeks or so I'll have back to January 2017 covered.
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  #857  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 2:04 PM
IrishIllini IrishIllini is offline
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^It's easy to tell who knows the city and who doesn't based on their impressions of the south and/or west sides. There are some bombed out areas on both the south and west sides, but it's far from the totality. Beverly is beautiful. Reminds me a bit of Edgebrook.

I'd be curious to see the number of renovation permits if you find yourself with the time and curiosity . I'm surprised by the amount of new construction, but it'd make sense with all the TODs and downtown high rises that have been built since the crash. I'd like to see more renovations that aren't deconversions (3 flats -> SFH). I'd also like to see the housing stock in Austin, Englewood, and the Garfield Park's see some reinvestment. Those are some beautiful neighborhoods and we're losing them.
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  #858  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 2:33 PM
marothisu marothisu is offline
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Austin is seeing a bit of renovations. The thing is that most renovation permits aren't what I would count here. I'm not counting stuff like alterations to a demising wall.

Maybe I can share what I have so far a bit later for the map.
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  #859  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 2:39 PM
sukwoo sukwoo is offline
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Originally Posted by marothisu View Post
Austin is seeing a bit of renovations. The thing is that most renovation permits aren't what I would count here. I'm not counting stuff like alterations to a demising wall.

Maybe I can share what I have so far a bit later for the map.
Which part of Austin? The Galewood neighborhood or the non Galewood parts?
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  #860  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2018, 2:49 PM
marothisu marothisu is offline
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Which part of Austin? The Galewood neighborhood or the non Galewood parts?
Surprisingly not Galewood though there are some up there. North Lawndale just north of Ogden following that road around the Pink Line too and of course Pilsen. I think some people may be surprised...there's a ton of renovation permits but a ton of noise amongst them if you are trying to figure out sizable single family home, multi unit building, office, etc rehabs and renovations. An entire renovation of a 3 unit building converting to a SFH is categorized the same as a permit to alter a single wall to provide electrical for a few new power outlets. It's hard to cut through the noise but I have a handful of months started.
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