How Condo Sales are Going at Chicago’s Newest Luxury Buildings

Chicago’s condo market has a long way to go to return to pre-pandemic health — with the lack of construction in the city of particular concern — but a rebound in sales last year suggests the local market is starting to thaw.

As ultra high-end condo offerings compete for wealthy second homebuyers beginning to return to the market, buildings that offer luxury units at more attainable price points — or are willing to be flexible — have come out on top, gaining momentum and avoiding the stigma of bulk sales.

The sales team at JDL’s One Chicago, for example, reduced prices last year after a “quiet” 2023, said Nancy Tassone, broker with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty. Now they are seeing a “snowball effect” of new momentum, she said.

“We see those gains not in the sale price; we see them in what’s selling and how many units are selling,” Tassone said. “Everybody knows the Chicago condo luxury market struggled over the last few years, and now to see so much inventory going is really refreshing.”

Buyers continue to be drawn to areas outside of the downtown core, and some have grown wary of buildings that have spent more time on the market. Developers noticed the caution, too, with last year marking the first in recent memory there wasn’t a major condo construction project underway.

While Crescent Heights’ Lake Shore Drive project and Sulo Development’s West Loop project are beginning to test the waters with new condo developments in the works, another, Akara Partners, canceled plans to dive into downtown development.

Luxury condos below $3 million have been much easier to sell given high interest rates and diminished resale values on high-end units, brokers said, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Whether a developer can afford to concede on prices depends on if they were able to structure a deal with today’s market in mind.

At 850 North Lake Shore Drive, for example, Crescent Heights is converting the building into condos after buying the Streeterville apartment building for a discounted $80 million in April.

Acquiring the building at a 42 percent discount from its last sale in 2016 meant Crescent Heights could offer condos at “similar prices” to the resale market while still turning a profit, said Wolf Development’s David Wolf, who is managing sales at the building. The one-bedrooms are listed for $422,000, and three-bedrooms for $1.17 million, filling a hole in the market as “most of the new construction out there is well over $1 million dollars,” he said.

Recent high-end condo sales like the 76th-floor unit at the St. Regis, which went for $8.3 million in November, show there are ultra-luxury buyers out there, but Wolf said the demand is much more consistent at slightly lower prices.

Even as the number of homes for sale statewide rose by 8 percent from December 2023 to December 2024, statewide inventory is still down by 59 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to a recent study by ResiClub. A contributing factor is the slow pace of new construction in the Chicago area. This is especially true for condo projects, which are needed to bring back a balanced market but are difficult to pencil out as the cost of construction remains high and resale values are still recovering.

This tightrope has been easier to walk for some than others.

Sales stats at Chicago’s newest luxury condo buildings

Cirrus

Sales at the Cirrus, the 350-unit condo building in Lakeshore East, have a strong pace with over 40 sales in the last 12 months, or about 3.33 sales per month, according to Brad Brondyke of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty.

Brondyke’s team started selling the Cirrus about a year ago and made some price adjustments at the start of last year, cutting prices about 5 percent across the board, he said. The building opened in 2022 and is about 50 percent occupied. Although developer Lendlease left the U.S. condo market last year, it took out a $130 million condo inventory loan in 2023 against unsold units in the Cirrus.

Brondyke said he expects 2025 to be a strong year for the building. Cirrus’ location and position as one of the only new construction condo buildings with average prices at $1.5 million plays in their favor, he said.

“This will be the newest building in the city for quite some time, and because of the price points, I don’t feel like we compete too directly with any of the new construction buildings,” Brondyke said.

One Chicago

This River North skyscraper’s sales team closed on 20 units last year, and of those deals, 14 condos sold for over $2 million, and six went for over $3 million, Tassone said. This was a marked improvement over the pace of sales in 2023.

But with an average of about 1.7 sales per month, some of the city’s other luxury condo buildings have pulled ahead of One Chicago’s sales pace, according to MLS data shared by a broker from a competing condo building.

850 Lake Shore Drive

At 850 Lake Shore Drive, over 60 units have gone under contract in the six months since its launch, according to Wolf. The 134-unit building recently reopened and closings began Jan. 7.

Tribune Tower

After more than two years on the market, sales at the 162-unit Tribune Tower building have slowed with just eight sales last year, according to MLS data.

It is now 80 percent sold since opening in mid-2022 after a conversion from office to luxury condos, and its more affordable one- and two-bedroom condos are sold out. The units that remain are more expensive — ranging from $3 million to $5.5 million, sales director Jeanne Martini said.

St. Regis

The Residences at St. Regis notched 26 sales last year — an average of 2.16 per month — excluding a recent bulk sale, according to MLS data. Three multi-million dollar sales closed in early January, two of which were over $6 million — a strong start to the new year.

Despite recent high-end deals at the St. Regis, the overall pace of sales has been a challenge for the building, which saw a slow down in 2023 and is entering its fifth year since opening to residents in 2020.

The St. Regis made headlines after Chicago-based developer Magellan’s bulk sale to GD Holdings in November. GD Holdings purchased 84 unsold condo units for $117 million, almost $1.4 million per unit. That followed the developer borrowing $150 million against unsold units in the building in 2023, a condo inventory loan like the one taken on the Cirrus.

There is a stigma associated with buildings that have been on the market for longer, and bulk sales like the one at the St. Regis contribute to this, Wolf said.

“There’s nothing wrong with these properties. But what they have left is expensive for many buyers, and they’ve been on the market for a very long time,” Wolf said. “I don’t think there’s massive distress,” but bulk sales can give buyers pause because they want to know they are buying into a healthy deal, he said.

Leila Zammatta, who is heading sales at the St. Regis, and a media representative for developer Magellan declined to respond to requests for comment.

The planned conversion of an apartment building at 707 North Wells — also known as the Chateau on Wells — further demonstrates developers’ challenges.

Unlike Crescent’s conversion plan at 850 North Lake Shore Drive, multifamily developer Akara Partners already owned the 43-unit River North apartment building and didn’t snag it at a discounted price. The developer announced plans to convert the building to condos in July, but the project fell apart in a matter of months.

“They thought they were going to get enough money in the sales aspect to make it worth their while, and the offers we were getting were not meeting their expectations,” said Americorp broker Matt Laricy, who was hired to lead the project. “We were getting good activity, but they just didn’t think it was good enough to take away from continuing to rent.”

Developers need to hit certain milestones to avoid losing money on a project, Laricy said. Even as buyers come back into the fold, the contrast is stark between the pacing of Chicago’s market and that of the luxury condo market in Miami or New York, where developments are met with wait lists, he said.

Sulo Development’s The Embry, which opened in late 2023, benefitted from being at the nexus of strong buyer demand: a high-amenity building in a hot neighborhood just outside the downtown core, offering luxury units at more attainable prices.

The West Loop project gave the firm a reason to dive back into condo construction, as it’s teeing up a three-tower plan nearby in Fulton Market.

Compass’ Mark Icuss and Tim Sheahan had 81 percent of its units under contract with buyers by the end of 2023, when it opened to residents, and have now closed on about 52 of 58 units as of early January, Icuss said. Much of the inventory hovers in the $2 million to $3 million range, but its 15th floor penthouse broke into the city’s priciest sales of last year when it fetched $7.56 million.

The Embry was one of few ground-up condo buildings in development when the cost of construction loans and materials made renovations and conversions more financially feasible than new construction, Icuss said.

The developers and sellers struggling the most are those who bought at the top of the market and put too much money into the unit or building, effectively “building themselves out of the market,” Icuss said. This has led to a tricky resale market in which sellers are often taking losses, but that doesn’t mean that the market isn’t recovering, he said.

“All in all, from a luxury perspective, there’s certainly evidence that there are a lot of very well-heeled buyers that are still doing deals in the city,” Icuss said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that 850 Lake Shore Drive reopened earlier this month. A previous version said it had yet to reopen.