Declining Population =/= Declining Economy

Just ask Calcutta....

Anyhow, amazing how much people have trouble comprehending that concept

NY/NYC takes the top ranking there probably. Most expesive places have negative population growth.

The construction is happening downtown, which is not declining at all in terms of population.

Some less desirable parts of Chicago are though, yes.

Not sure where you heard this, I've recently heard NY is growing faster than expected every year.

In Schaumburg news:

Schaumburg mulling big parking garage for convention center area
Schaumburg officials are proposing a six-story, 1,100-space parking garage to serve the Schaumburg Convention Center and Renaissance Hotel as well as new businesses that could join a planned entertainment district nearby. The garage would include ground-floor retail and cost between $30 million and $33 million. [Daily Herald]

Let’s take a SSP field trip there!

New York has negative net domestic migration. But such figures usually don't consider births or international migration.

https://www.luxurychicagoapartments....ts-in-chicago/

This has some interesting nuggets of information:

As we near the end of the year, Costar Data is reporting a record number of apartments were delivered and absorbed in 2018. In the first three quarters of the year, 9,500 units were absorbed, while 7,000 new apartments were delivered. Not surprisingly leading the charge in absorption and delivery are the Class-A luxury apartments in downtown Chicago.

First, rent growth experienced a re-acceleration in 2018, with pricing continuing to trend upwards. Costar expects this trend to continue, which is positive for apartment developers. However, do expect seasonality to play a part in pricing fluctuations during the year as Chicago is the most seasonally impacted market in the country. Luxury Living Chicago Realty can attest to this as we are currently feeling the effects of this phenomena and do every year. However, we also anticipate pricing to trend upwards as we move into the first and second quarters of 2019.

Secondly, apartment concessions are real and will remain in place as Chicago continues to see a surge in supply. This is good news for renters who have grown used to receiving some sort of concession when renting. Costar is reporting 35% of apartments currently for rent have some type of concession, whether it’s a month free, or some other financial incentive for the renter.

does anyone know/have theories as to why this is?

and it's not just the rental market but also the property sale game too.

when we bought our new home a year ago last november, our real estate agent told us "if you guys don't buy this place, i think i might because i can easily flip this property as is for an additional $30 - 40K in the spring market." so we bought it.

granted, that was super-motivated sellers going through a divorce who just wanted to clear the property of their books so they could both move on with their lives, so we were able to drive a pretty hard bargain with them, but why this huge seasonal fluctuation in property value that is apparently larger than any other market?

That's a good question, I think it's just driven by cold weather and less people looking during these months. I agree it's strange.

On the rental side, it could have to do with people spending summers in Chicago. Apparently it is common for students from Ireland:

Anecdotally, I know a baby boomer couple who lives in La Grange, but rented an apartment in the city for the summer.

The holidays too, I think people are just less likely to look for housing during the holidays and winter.

but wouldn't boston, NYC, detroit, minneapolis, etc. deal with these exact same things?

why is it that the chicago apparently has the largest seasonal fluctuations of any market? is it just part of the culture here?

it seems so weird to me that a property might increase/decrease in value by tens of thousands of dollars just because of the season.

i've bought and sold a number of properties over the past decade, and all i've ever heard from real estate people is "buy in the fall, sell in the spring".

There might be considerations given school calendars, but I don't see why those wouldn't exist in other places as well.

Good question. I didn't realize that it's more pronounced here.

Exactly.

I always hate having vacant apartments in the dead of winter, often very hard to fill. People just don't like to move when it's frozen tundra outside, not that I can blame them

Not to give Schaumburg too much credit, but in theory a centralized parking garage could allow that area to be redeveloped in a more walkable fashion, more like downtown Naperville than the suburban hellscape we're used to seeing in Schaumburg.

The Motorola campus across Meacham is getting redeveloped too, the developers there are at least paying lip service to walkability and urban design but the buildings unveiled so far are more of the same suburban junk. Maybe more like suburban Dallas than what we've seen so far in suburban Chicago, but still junk.

^ Well, if our burbs are gonna survive they need to compete with suburban Dallas, not with downtown Chicago.

Besides, as we discussed many times before, we have a downtown Chicago. Dallas, et al doesn’t and never will.

I've said it before, but thriving suburbs are critical to Chicago's future, just as much as a thriving downtown is. A bustling city core need not eschew it's outlier areas, because those outlier areas help pump a lot of money into said city core. The question becomes how best to enhance the suburbs so that they are better connected to the City (and not solely the downtown area), while simultaneously making them denser, more sustainable, more walkable, more affordable, and more contemporary.

Anybody watch that HGTV show Windy City Rehab?

The lady is a bit intense, but casts a neat light into flipping homes in the local real estate

Yes! I find it to be one of the better examples of this type of show (although I'm certainly biased).