Not every new development in the South Loop is a high-rise in Central Station or on Michigan or Wabash avenues. Judging from our NewHomeNotebook.com database, at least 10 different projects comprising more than 1,100 homes come in the form of new-construction mid-rises or adapted loft buildings. From Clark Street (site of the Lofts at Roosevelt Collection, seen above left) to Indiana Avenue (Prairie District Lofts, above right), and Eighth Street (One Place Condominiums, bottom left) down to 24th (The Wabash Club, bottom right), acrophobes can find one- to three-bedroom new-construction homes priced from the $190s to the $720s and one- to four-bedroom true lofts from the $200s to the $650s.

I plan to take a closer look at some of these developments in the coming days. In the meantime, you can browse our list of them on NewHomeNotebook. Jump into the conversation and rate and review any of those developments, or put together a list of your favorite (or least favorite) new projects.

• View our list of South Loop lofts and mid-rises

The sales staff at The Enterprise Companies' 1400 Museum Park didn't invite me up to the tower's top floor on Sunday, but the maintenance and door staff insisted I go back up to check out the amenities, guerrilla style. The amenities for the most part were the standard fare - a large lounge outfitted with a wall-mounted television and an adjoining kitchen, a fitness center equipped with a few bikes and treadmills, and a narrow indoor pool - but the exposures were nice, offering views of the South Loop and beyond in every direction but west.

Enterprise is still trying to sell 29 units in the 260-unit tower at 100 E 14th St. At last check, prices there ran from the $370s for a one-bedroom up to the $700s for a three-bedroom. One-bedroom floor plans in 1400 Museum Park have 837 to 927 square feet, two-bedrooms have 1,238 to 1,387 square feet, and three-bedrooms have 1,667 to 1,684 square feet.

NewHomeNotebook:
• Rate and review 1400 Museum Park
• View our list of South Loop high-rises
• View our list of high-rises with swimming pools

When news broke in September that Salman Ibrahim, principal of Sunrise Equities, skipped town, a big question mark was hung atop Pure, the 67-unit condo development at 24 S Morgan St in the West Loop. At the time, we received word that the nearly-completed building would be moving forward, but details were slow to emerge.

On Friday, while scoping new-construction in the West Loop, I noticed a new sign in the window at Pure, advertising a Web site, PureWestLoop.com, that doesn't seem to be online yet, and a new broker, Prudential Preferred Properties.

Kevin Green from Prudential says he’s been handling sales for the past three months, but this isn’t his first stint with Pure. Green originally marketed the development for Sunrise, before it was shuffled to @properties and later Rubloff.

Pure's new developer, the bank-owned Pure 67 LLC, will continue with the development according to most of the original plans, Green says. That means that special features and building amenities like the Pure Portal and the Skai Lounge still will be included. The only deviation from the original course is that there will be no door staff, which Green says would have been cost-prohibitive.

Green says 26 of the building's 67 homes are still available, and deliveries started about a month ago. Many of the available units have been finished and can deliver within 30 days, but the penthouse floor hasn’t been completed because Green says he expects those buyers to want to customize. Current pricing is the same as it was before Sunrise left the scene, with one-bedrooms starting in the $260s, but Green says the developer is open to negotiation on garage parking and finish upgrades.

NewHomeNotebook:
• Rate and review Pure

Related posts:
• Follow-up: Pure moving ahead without Sunrise (Sept. 22)
• Journal: Where is Pure's developer? (Sept. 19)

I'm sure developers would prefer we publish the kinds of vistas found inside their elaborately designed promotional packets - images of clear blue skies, green park grass, and glowing nighttime cityscapes - but the shots above are a little more representative of what you're going to see this time of year.

I shot both of these images from the same $2.3-million three-bedroom at One Museum Park that I wrote about yesterday. The unit, located on northeast corner of the tower's 23rd floor, has an unobstructed view of the Loop skyline to the west, Grant Park (and the rather unbecoming Metra tracks) to the north, and the lake, the museum campus and Soldier Field to the east. The master bedroom has its own views to the north northwest, while the second bedroom and the den-sized third bedroom both have views to the east.

NewHomeNotebook:
• Rate and review One Museum Park
• View our list of South Loop high-rises
• View our list of high-rises with swimming pools

Related post:
• Inside a three-bedroom at One Museum Park (Jan. 5)

About 30 years ago, I bought two condos in a client's conversion in Park Ridge for $56,000 each, and sold them a week after, closing in the low $70s each. My client was no fool. He had a well-honed strategy that yielded millions of dollars of quick profits on each of his large conversions.

Another client, at a time when the top tax rate on ordinary income was 70 percent, compensated his sales staff in part by steep discounts on units which they rented for a year and then sold, paying the then top capital gains rate of 28 percent on their income.

In the early '80s, I sold two lots in the 1800 block of Maud, for which I'd paid $10,000 each from a seller who bought them for taxes of $300 each, for $20,000 a lot – less than half of their value at the time. I was hard up for cash and needed it quickly.

In 1985, I liquidated 24 units in one of my developments, after renting them for six years, at about 85 percent of their market value. Why? I'd negotiated a deal whereby my lender took a steep hit in exchange for an accelerated payoff. My discounted selling prices yielded me a very nice profit.

In the mid-'80s, I bought a single-family home in the 1500 block of Wieland for $70,000 and resold it within weeks for $110,000. The seller, First Chicago Bank, sold it at its appraised value. The appraisal was done by a suburbanite who was clueless about Old Town property values.

I could go on in this vein at some length. Why recount these old stories now?

I've recently seen buyers scoffing at current asking prices based on what the seller paid for the property several years ago. Their theory is that, if the seller paid x in 2006, and is now asking x plus 20 percent, the seller is clearly deranged. Perhaps that's the case.

What's more certain is that buyers should pay no attention to the price a seller paid. That price may have been below market – or above it – and has no relevance to the property's current value.

A word to the wise: Ignore what the seller paid, and focus solely on the property's current value. Any other approach is foolish at best.

I worked for an association promoting housing, and it was my job to represent their interests. If you look at my actual forecasts, the numbers were right in line with most forecasts. … I was a public spokesman writing about housing having a good future. I was wrong. I have to take responsibility for that.

-David Lereah, former chief economist of the National Association of Realtors and author of Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust - And How You Can Profit from It, speaking to Money Magazine.

Lereah is now a private consultant, and he expects to see a modest recovery in 2009, but warns that "it'll take a long time to get back to the peak prices we saw in many markets."

While witnessing the spire installation on the Trump International Hotel & Tower on Saturday, I had to keep my feet moving to stay warm, so I marched over to Aqua, at 225 N Columbus Dr in Magellan Development's Lakeshore East mega-development.

Last month, Joe reported that 71 out 87 floors were already in place, so there isn't much further to go on this one. Some more black balcony railings have been added to the lower levels, and it looks like work is being completed on the building's base, which also has a wavy design. When Joe spoke with the Magellan sales team last month, just 13 of Aqua's 267 homes were still available.

NewHomeNotebook:
• Rate and review Aqua
• View our list of Chicago's tallest new towers
• View our list of new high-rises with pools

Related posts:
• Sixteen stories, 13 home sales to go at Aqua (Dec. 12)
• CVS to anchor Aqua's retail space (Dec. 10)

For the past few years, Studio Dwell Architects has been quietly carving out a modern niche in the residential market. The firm made a splash in 2006 when it collaborated with the Seattle-based Miller Hull Partnership on a nine-story residential building developed by Ranquist Development at 156 W Superior St in River North. Since then, Studio Dwell and Ranquist have partnered on a number of smaller residential developments in Bucktown and Wicker Park, and we've recently seen its designs crop up in the West Loop, West Town and Ukrainian Village.

Our list of Studio Dwell designs has just five developments on it. That's pretty short, because it's limited to buildings that still have new homes for sales. For a complete list of projects the firm has had a hand in, refer to the firm's Web site.

NewHomeNotebook:
• View our list of Studio Dwell-designed condos

Five days in, everyone seems to have found the story for 2009. Crain's published a story this morning about the imminent completion of more than 2,100 condos in the South Loop, more than 40 percent of which remain unsold. This afternoon, it followed up with a video version of that story (fast-forward to the 40-second mark) that includes some remarks from Gail Lissner of Appraisal Research Counselors.

In it, Lissner gets straight to the point about what we can expect beyond 2009:

What we’re seeing in 2010 is there is no more new development taking place. There will be zero units delivered in the South Loop in 2010, so anyone who is looking for new construction will really need to be buying one of these units that was delivered in 2009, because there is no more pipeline at this point.

I still want to take a full-blown tour of Michigan Avenue Tower II, but it's hard to do so when its sales staff still hasn't received the proper furnishings for its models. For the time being, I'm forced to look at the South Loop high-rise from afar, as I did from the top floor of the neighboring 1400 Museum Park yesterday afternoon.

Most of the 269 homes in Frankel & Giles' 28-story tower at 1400 S Michigan Ave have closed or are under contract, but several units, ranging from 580 square-foot studios up to 1,260 square-foot two-bedrooms with dens, were still for sale from the $210s to the $520s last month.

Frankel & Giles seems open to renting out units, as it has ane 750 square-foot one-bedroom listed for rent at $1,600 a month. It's not alone, either: 14 other rentals are listed from $1,250 to $2,600 per month.

Monthly assessments on the for-sale units range from $214 to $522 and cover costs for utilities and amenities like a fitness center, outdoor pool and sundeck, and 24-hour door staff. Parking spaces are available from $37,500 to $65,000.

EDIT: As the comments below suggest, Frankel & Giles is just the exclusive marketer for Michigan Avenue Tower II. The title of "developer" belongs to Russland Capital Group.

NewHomeNotebook:
• Rate and review Michigan Avenue Tower II
• View our list of South Loop high-rises
• View our list of high-rises with swimming pools