OneEleven Apartment Building
A new Chicago real estate record was set last week when the 60-story OneEleven apartment building in the downtown Loop sold for $328.2 million. The Wall St. Journal noted the the price equates to $651,000 per unit, which makes it the highest-price ever paid for an apartment building of more than 50 units in Chicago.
The deal is yet another sign ultra-luxury apartment living has moved beyond just the big coastal cities like San Francisco and New York. The prevailing thought has been that in Midwestern cities, wealthy buyers prefer to buy homes rather than pay high rents. But that is changing, especially among the young and wealthy, for a number of reasons. One is younger people prefer to avoid lengthy commutes to their jobs, for example.
Ben Thypin, a director for Real Capital Analytics in New York, told the Journal the purchase price for OneEleven “is emblematic of the seemingly insatiable demand for high-quality, large real-estate assets in primary markets.
OneEleven was purchased by Chicago-based global real-estate investment-management firm Heitman. The previous owner was a unit of New York-based Relates Cos., the Journal reports.
OneEleven has 504 units. Rents range from $1,700 a month for studios to $12,000 a month for three-bedroom penthouses.
Because of the high purchase price, speculation among Chicago real estate insiders is OneEleven will eventually be turned into a condominium complex in order to achieve positive cash flow. Units would probably cost an average of $1 million.