Nah, I read it. Just took it to mean someday while we're alive. :haha:

It's an interesting topic of discussion. It probably deserves its own thread. This recent (years) building boom is eerily reminicent of the last one. Maybe the surrounding economic conditions don't mirror everything that went down prior to 2008...but if you don't see a pretty significant over-build going on, I don't know what else to add.

I wasn't here in 2008 but it seems all of the statistics are showing that the residential market is still not satisfied. The commercial projects (110 N Wacker, Salesforce, OPO) have anchor tenants or large commitments already and the West Loop commercial built on spec are filling up long before they are even finished with construction.

I don't see how the two booms could be reminiscent of eachother

Well, you may be about to find out...

Maybe not this year, but it's coming. So predictable when a free market has greedy developers and bankers. All these million dollar condos by the hundreds, is not a sustainable situation in Chicago. I just read in the article posted here that the Bennet 2 bedrooms are starting at a cool 2 million each. It goes up from there. Vista? 1000 S. Mich? Nema? Essex? OCS? Really?? Now throw in Tribune Tower, LSD whatever-its-called? And Amazon said piss off because your weather and crime suck. Okay. Let's see.

Also, can we talk about the term "anchor tenant"? What percentage of the massive WPS building is Salesforce occupying?

Call me dubious.

If Amazon went to DC because our weather and crime suck, then that wouldn't make sense... they went there for political power and proximity :haha:

Also you were mixing in condos and apartments in your commentary there, doesn't make much sense to compare the two markets. Add in the fact that thousands of people are moving in with high paying jobs, and I just don't see how you can compare 2008 to now.

You are overly pessimistic, and while some here are definitely a bit willing to bite at the pie in the sky proposals, they are more pleasant to listen to and debate in better faith than you just did.

More likely Amazon wanted to be closer to D.C. in order to sway an ever-increasingly long list of Congress/Senator-bozos to bow to their every beck and call, actually. Chicago had excellent locations spotted out, but it could never compete when it comes to the purchasing of national, vs. local, politicians. Local politicians, I'd say Chicago has the bribery pretty much wrapped up tight, though. ;)

Aaron (Glowrock)

Except you are wrong, there's maybe about 200 units of luxury condos being delivered in the next year mostly between Vista and OBP. Compare that to 2007 when like 4000 condos we're delivered. The rental market is mainly where the construction is and vacancy has remained low with the market repeatedly absorbing huge blocks of supply with little to no effect on rents or vacancy.

Just for the sake of contributing some supporting literature/data: The quarterly research reports published by Colliers (and any other large commercial real estate firm for that matter) have shown that Downtown has seen some pretty impressive job growth over the past few years (mainly suburban relocations and coastal migrations as the Colliers report points out) which in turn has supported a booming luxury rental market.

Although I feel bbhawk has a fuzzy grasp behind the dynamics affecting commercial real estate, I think it's worth mentioning that the city's perception regarding crime may indeed have been a hindrance in our HQ2 bid according to this recent op-ed written by the Deputy Mayor on Crain's. As much as I love this city it's got to be said that we don't have the best reputation outside of the midwest. I can't tell yall the number of weird looks I got from people when I mentioned I was moving to Chicago (coming from Dallas), and the topic of crime is something that I'm pretty commonly asked about when I'm visiting other places.

Domestic media has done the city an enormous disservice in this department. I sometimes hear that parroted back at me from people who live in places with worse (or even much worse crime) than Chicago. Somebody from Baltimore recently asked me how I managed to live here...

One interesting thing I've noticed anecdotally in my travels is that this perception does not seem to be international. Anybody I've talked to overseas is loaded with questions about the city and none of them has been crime related.

I agree, the media, both local and national have done Chicago a great disservice crimewise. They made Chicago a daily poster boy for crime gone wild these last years, including Donald Trump belittling our city on almost a daily basis. But now that crime has subsided substantially, the press has nothing positive to say, but let there be one hot weekend and they will have another negative lead-in about out of control crime in Chicago. Meanwhile while driving north on LSD Saturday I saw the Vista Tower, and it is even more impressive when seen live. Very few buildings live up to their press clippings, but this one does.

This. Simply this.

Aaron (Glowrock)

^ Just being pessimistic for the sake of it doesn't make one astute--no offense.

Obviously a recession is coming, and obviously some projects will be killed due to it. But the notion that anything remotely similar to 2008 will happen again is quite unlikely.

If you actually look at the data, it's been shown that despite our construction boom office and apartment vacancy and rents have stayed fairly stable.

Also, your posts suggest that you don't really understand why the 2008 collapse happened.

I'm not sure how old you are, but for those of us who are old enough to have lived through multiple expansion/recession cycles, we can bear witness to the fact that the 2008 financial crisis was unlike any recession in at least 35 years, and strong arguments can be made that it was the worst since the Great Depression. There's a reason its called The Great Recession.

The chances of the same sort of recession happening again are pretty slim.

There have been hardly any condos built in this cycle relative to the amount of housing added. And I'm not sure why you believe there isn't a market for hundreds of million dollar condos. There are nearly a quarter million people living in the Central area, in around 150,000 housing units. At a minimum, low single digits of them can afford million dollar homes. That's thousands of million dollar homes being in demand, even if only half those who can afford them choose to buy. And it actually wouldn't surprise me if the number of people or couples wanting to live in the Central Area, who could afford a million dollar home, was as high as 20% of the total housing market in the Central Area. And that's not even counting the non-residents who buy a home here - we may not have as many people doing that as New York, but it's still a thing here.

I'm not sure why you think Chicagoans are poor. Some are, yes, but there are still many, many wealthy Chicagoans.

^ I think that's just it. A lot of people, including locals, don't actually realize how much wealth there is here.

Plus, a million dollar home isn't really what it once was. It's still costly, of course, but the threshold that you need to buy a million dollar home, especially with both spouses working, is not nearly as unattainable as it used to be.

If anything, I'm surprised that we haven't seen a whole lot more given just how huge Chicagoland is. To some degree, there is a 'zero sum game' thing going on here, where at least some of the downtown high end condo construction is coming at the expense of the suburbs, particularly the North Shore.

I suspect that's not the majority, though. I think much of it is new inventory for newer households entering the $1 million+ home market, especially in light of all of the jobs created in the past several years.

What the hell does "greedy developers and bankers" have to do with anything? You build and finance what is in demand and is cost effective. Without subsidies or tax credits it's very difficult to build affordable housing. It's not like you get discounts on lumber and from the construction trades to lower the cost because you want to build something that is affordable.

And I believe Salesforce is leasing 500,000 SF out of 1.2Million. That's a big lease.

That wouldn't make sense? Okay. How is Amazon going to be linked in to politics exactly? To what end? Honest question. Introduce mail on Sundays? They're called lobbiests. And they can stay at any DC hotel while lobbying.

PS: Bezo's has a home in DC, years prior. Owns the Washington Post. And now has very valuable info of about 20 major cities. Now that's politics, baby!

Predicated on the future.

Thanks for the Salesforce figures. But I respectfully point out...do you see what you just surmised? 500,000 SF if a lot of SF. And what is left? 700,000 SF.

That's what happens with commercial office real estate. Developer gets a certain amount of pre leasing and then start building as you've met a threshold required by lenders. You continue leasing from there. Other office users are the candidates for the rest of the space. There is nothing unique about the situation.

No offense taken. So 2008 could have been avoided had we had just known how it all works? Why did it happen if we are all so smart? In other words, If we know its coming why don't we stop it from happening? Imo, it's because of greed.

I have a good grasp on why the recession of 2008 happened. And I'm sure the good folks of 1939 thought it would never happen again. So, Yea, instead of saying "the last 35 years" why not just say the last 79 years?

Don't mistake pessimism for reality-check. Your paycheck is effected by all this too. But, yea, the skylines looking great. ;)

I get this. This is a problem. If not kept in check who wins? Who loses?

Just because you can identify the system, it doesn't make the system a-ok. just saying.