I started to poke around the other day on the MLS trying to figure out a better way to track new construction of single family homes in Chicago. After all it’s a big city and it’s hard for buyers to keep track of what is going on everywhere. Well, I think I finally hit on a good methodology, which I explain at the bottom of this post. In short, the idea was to focus on “new” homes marketed and often sold in the last 12 months. I found just under 300 of these new construction single family homes marketed in Chicago in the last year.
As I went through the list I was able to identify geographic groupings of properties by price point as you might expect so I decided to do a short post on each of these groupings. The first logical grouping (admittedly using Gary logic) was under $400,000.
New Construction Single Family Homes In Chicago Under $400,000
You would be surprised what you can buy under $400,000 in this city. There were 58 of these homes marketed in the last 12 months – only 6 of which are currently on the market. First let’s look at where these homes are located. As you can see in the map below they tend to be clustered along the Kennedy (mostly west of it) and the Stevenson (mostly south of it).
If we go in for a closer look we see that each area has it’s own style and is being built up by different developers. And, unfortunately, the map above can be a bit deceiving when several homes are right on top of one another – they get buried.
For instance, Noah Properties, who is doing a ton of new construction across the city, built 5 new homes right next to each other in Dunning in the 7600 West block of Addison. These homes, all priced near $345,000, look very similar to their more expensive models in East and Ukrainian Villagethat sell for $800,000, but obviously are a bit smaller and have somewhat less expensive finishes. But the photos look awesome (the photo at the top of this post is one of these homes) and the homes have 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths and are on 30 x 125 lots. The square footage is not listed.
A number of new homes in this price range are also being built west of Western in West Town, Logan Square, and the east end of Humboldt Park as seen in the map below. For example, Ranquist Development built 8 rowhomes with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms priced just under $400,000 at California and Shakespeare in their Flexhouse development, only 1 1/2 blocks from the blue line stop. The listings don’t indicate the square footage but the “lots” are 17 x 71. And numerous 2400 square foot SmartTech homes with 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, and ultra-modern finishes have been built in that area, also priced just under $400,000.
Meanwhile, Landmark & Property Group is developing bungalows in Brighton Park, McKinley Park, and Bridgeport that are priced in the $260,000 – 340,000 price range. For instance, $340,000 (listed at $369,000) buys you a 2200 square foot home on a 24 x 108 lot in Bridgeport with 5 bedrooms and 3 baths. Here is what one of these looks like.
The homes that Landmark built in Brighton Park and McKinley Park offered more for the money but are farther from downtown obviously. Without a doing a lot of research on these different offerings it sure seems to me like the Noah Properties homes in Dunning blow away these south side homes but the commute would be a lot tougher from Dunning.
Methodology For Identifying New Construction Homes
It dawned on me that when a new home is built and listed they don’t know what the property taxes are going to be so they list them as NEW. In addition, if the home is truly new and has been marketed in the last 12 months then in all likelihood it was built no earlier than 2011. So I looked for that as well. Flipping through my results it seems that this technique does a pretty good job of identifying the new construction homes.
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