Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu
Landlords haven't gotten the memo yet. As my wife and I continue to look, we notice that prices at most places aren't dropping at all in downtown Chicago for apartments even relative to 1.5 months ago.
Part of me thinks it's landlords trying to partially make up for what they missed out on during the pandemic.
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Well, landlords are going to charge whatever they can get away with. They can charge whatever they want but if nobody is taking the bait, then they will obviously have to lower rents.
I am actually encouraged by the downtown market being up because downtown rents set the tone for the entire city’s rental market. Right now I have a few units that are stubbornly hard to fill (despite having lowered the price a few times), so a rising market is encouraging. However, what matters to me is how badly people want to ride the trains, as a sizable portion of my portfolio is near transit.
Living downtown is a bit more Covid-safe because you simply need to walk outside to get to most destinations. But along the L line neighborhoods, transit “fear” may actually dampen interest in these neighborhoods. Covid is truly an existential problem for our cities and it would behoove our city leaders to try to reduce the fear around this virus (some of which is unnecessary) if we are ever going to make a complete economic recovery.