Citadel’s Ken Griffin is pushing to sell his remaining condos in downtown Chicago.
Griffin relisted his condo spanning the 36th floor at No. 9 Walton in Gold Coast at $8.5 million this week, poised to sell at a 30 percent loss. This comes just days after he sold his unfinished units on the 37th and 38th floors of the building for a combined $19 million, a loss of $15 million, but still the most-expensive residential transaction in Chicago this year.
The billionaire hedge fund manager and Citadel CEO purchased the 36th-floor unit for just over $12 million back in 2017, when he bought four floors in the building – the 35th through 38th – in a package of deals that totaled more than $58 million.
But after 2020, when the city saw a spike in crime in the downtown area, Griffin moved his company’s headquarters to Miami and put many of his Chicago properties up for sale. Lately, they have been selling like hot cakes, racking up losses as they go.
“Anytime you lower prices to a place that seems more palatable, units will transact,” said Nancy Tassone of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, who is handling Griffin’s 36th floor listing, along with Emily Sachs Wong.
“But in the ultra high-end market, there also has to be a seismic shift in something else,” Tassone continued. “There’s price, but there’s also desirability to live and be in Chicago. We took a really hard hit after Covid for a variety of reasons, but it’s coming back, and people are ready.”
Griffin listed the 36th floor condo at No. 9 Walton last June for $12 million, which would have come close to recovering what he invested in the property in 2017. Susan Miner of Premier Relocation had the listing then.
On Wednesday, he put the unit back on the market with a price reduction of $3.5 million, according to public listing information.
They priced the unit at $8.5 million “given that the 37th floor just closed out at $9 million, and it’s the identical floor plan with the same outdoor space,” Sachs Wong said. The 38th floor unit that sold with it went for $10 million for a total of $19 million — making the deal the priciest residential purchase in Chicago this year, beating out a Lincoln Park mansion that sold in August for $15.25 million.
Griffin bought the four unfinished floors at No. 9 Walton with plans to build them out but never got around to it and instead kept his Waldorf Astoria condo as a primary Chicago residence until selling it in 2022.
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While many Chicago buyers are leaning toward turn-key homes, ultra-luxury buyers also value having “super current finishes,” Sachs Wong said. That the raw unit is “completely customizable” is a selling point, but it is factored into the new list price, he said.
Griffin has poured over $1 billion into South Florida real estate acquisitions since leaving Chicago, including a $286.5 million purchase of the 1221 Brickell tower in Miami, and a $106.9 million purchase of Adrienne Arsht’s waterfront estate in Coconut Grove, Miami. He has also invested in a $1 billion mixed-use tower development in Miami’s Brickell Financial District and owns multiple properties on Star Island, Miami Beach.