Exactly five years ago today we checked up on the construction status of Mondial, a new condominium project then underway at 900 W Huron in River West, and found it approximately half complete.
Mondial ran head-on into a tough condo market. Sales stalled and the original developer pulled the units from the market, offered them for rent for a while and then re-launched a sales effort, which also stalled out.
Waterton Associates acquired the unsold units at Mondial, bought out the original condo buyers and conducted a successful rental program. According to Mondial’s near real-time availability check, the building has no current vacancies and has only a few units available for June 1st occupancy.
Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily reported late last week that Waterton has retained a broker to sell the building at a price that may reach $450,000 a unit. That’s a higher per-unit price than when the units were last offered for sale as condominiums.
The 250-unit 1225 Old Town apartment building went under contract recently at a price that is likely to have been in excess of its condominium value. Check the per-unit selling prices reported by Crain’s, and it’s hard not to conclude that new apartment projects are worth more as rental buildings than as condominiums.
