Chicago ranked #15 of 25 world cities --> set to be cities of the future

[damba]

Why should I drop the price of my home $100k just for you? Are you a special snowflake?

You clearly either haven't lived in or taken a close look at other areas of the US where ALL housing prices are through the nose.

[Fighting Fungus]

Originally Posted by emathias

This is patently false.

Industrial vacancy is at a 15 year low.

REVPAR for hotels is the highest it's ever been.

Commercial rents are the highest they've ever been.

Downtown apartment rents are the highest they've ever been.

Whether Englewood or Austin, or even Belmont-Cragin, for that matter, have good real estate pricing is largely irrelevant to discussions of Chicago's economic health.

Rents are high because many people lost their homes after the crash. Chicago is one of the few cities where market values are still below 2008. The majority of people in Illinois can't get what they paid for their house in 2008. We are getting our asses kicked by other cities when it comes to property values. We are losing our place as the third strongest city in the country, Portland, Denver, Houston, Boston and many other cities are kicking our ass. Chicago has underachieved in the last 10 years. To say we are doing great is being delusional.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by emathias

This is patently false.

Industrial vacancy is at a 15 year low.

REVPAR for hotels is the highest it's ever been.

Commercial rents are the highest they've ever been.

Downtown apartment rents are the highest they've ever been.

Whether Englewood or Austin, or even Belmont-Cragin, for that matter, have good real estate pricing is largely irrelevant to discussions of Chicago's economic health.

Originally Posted by Fighting Fungus

Rents are high because many people lost their homes after the crash. Chicago is one of the few cities where market values are still below 2008. The majority of people in Illinois can't get what they paid for their house in 2008. We are getting our asses kicked by other cities when it comes to property values. We are losing our place as the third strongest city in the country, Portland, Denver, Houston, Boston and many other cities are kicking our ass. Chicago has underachieved in the last 10 years. To say we are doing great is being delusional.

I know emathias understands that a big factor in why industrial vacancies are low is due to the DEMOLITION of much of the previously functional industrial space. Much of what has not been demolished is no longer dedicated to good paying employers that make high-value manufactured good but instead much sq footage is now dedicated to low margin warehousing and frankly silly things like "self storage" that other "global cities" don't even bother with...

Similarly the upticks in hotel revenues are really a function of how much folks WHO LIVE AND WORK ELSEWHERE find Chicago to be a relative bargain for travel in an era where few folks feel good about traveling overseas... While I appreciate the dollars tourists are spending the fact is folks visiting here EARNED those dollars in other cities where the COL is probably lower and the effective combination of even reduced wages with more sustainable taxes means visitors have more to spend. It would be WONDERFUL if anyone in Illinois / Chicago government could internalize THAT lesson...

While the shift of employers into not just traditional "Class A" high rises but a whole bunch of hastily retrofitted funky loft-ish buildings is driving up commercial rents, the viability of many of these places has yet to be tested -- I'd guess a whole lot of the so-called "venture capital" is really throw-away money from folks that really have no clue how to actual deliver value to investors. That is part of larger trend that gets under reported, but when the "roots" of much of what is heralded as "Chicago's VC powerbrokers" are simply fat guys who are rich because of the businesses their parents / grandparents built the fragility of success should not be overlooked -- I fear that too many folks are really spinning multiple "startups" and none of the "money people" really are adding value. This sort of thing is usually at the heart of many failed start-ups https://hackernoon.com/lesson-from-5...p-fa6ad3658d40

Finally the long awaited rise in residential rents for "downtown apartments" is more an indicator of how long it has been that the Loop and surrounding areas have been and remain a poor choice for renters. Realistically those with the smarts to instead choose Lincoln Park or even River North where the mix of restaurants / night spots / shops is not so heavily biased toward OFFICE WORKERS shows who is getting much more for their housing dollars -- even on the nicest days of summer the way the Loop "clears out" when offices close makes for some spectacularly BORING and limited options. For all the joyous proclamations of "urbanists" over how "mixed use" is THE THING the fact is it really sucks when many of the best places to have an interesting meal "downtown" are really LUNCH spots that are closed or deserted when diner hour rolls around. Don't get me started on how poor the choices are should you get a hankering for anything when the bars are packed or even worse when they close...

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by emathias

This is patently false.

Whether Englewood or Austin, or even Belmont-Cragin, for that matter, have good real estate pricing is largely irrelevant to discussions of Chicago's economic health.

No, this is patently false. We are missing economic opportunity. We are suffering high crime in some areas. That is bleeding over into the Emerald City. It'll get more pronounced if not fixed.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by BRU67

No, this is patently false. We are missing economic opportunity. We are suffering high crime in some areas. That is bleeding over into the Emerald City. It'll get more pronounced if not fixed.

Originally Posted by emathias

...

Whether Englewood or Austin, or even Belmont-Cragin, for that matter, have good real estate pricing is largely irrelevant to discussions of Chicago's economic health.

While I suspect that emathias is quite a bit more enlightened than his dismissal of some of Chicago's less developer-friendly makes him sound, the fact is TOO MANY other residents of Chicago truly do allow this sort of thinking to shrug at the real problems the city faces -- it is not as though the crime and other problems that are rampant in the rougher parts of Chicago are harmless. The dollars spent on police and courts and prisons as well the medical costs are extreme. That is an undeniable negative!

It is also true that the problems of things like schools in such areas are massive drain on CPS -- the decision to close schools like Dunbar and build a whole new high school in Englewood is going to result in tens of millions of dollars that will greatly impact the decisions of CPS for decades.

Even the relatively low crime areas like Belmont-Cragin are an issue when the shifts from relatively high wage employers that once had jobs for folks in fields like food processing or manufacturing leave the area -- just as many suburbs understand how important it is to have BALANCE between residential development and commercial / industrial the city will suffer if the loss of employers continues...

[Larry Siegel]

Originally Posted by Fighting Fungus

A good marker of how Chicago is doing is real estate values. Our real estate is in the pits and hasn't recovered since the crash.

Seriously? It costs almost $2 million to buy a new house in a nice area. You want to see a real estate market that is in the pits, go to Cleveland (300 miles away and 1/10 the price).