Full-Floor Condo in Chicago’s Palmolive Building Sells for Loss

A full-floor condo at the Palmolive Building has traded hands for $5.15 million.

The building’s 23rd-floor condo sold in a deal that reflects a financial loss for the seller and one of the highest-priced residential sales of the year, Crain’s reported. The price works out to $953 per square foot. Jill Silverstein represented the undisclosed buyer. The seller wasn’t identified.

The three-bedroom unit sold for $5.8 million in 2006 and $6.25 million in 2018, or roughly $1,074 and $1,157 per square foot. Even after undergoing renovations and being listed for $7.25 million in 2022, the condo sold for less than its previous prices.

The transaction marks a loss for the seller, but it signals a warming luxury market. Eight of the top ten sales this year have been downtown condos. The surge in activity builds on the 45 percent year-over-year jump in residential transactions last year.

Chicago recorded more than 100 residential transactions priced at $4 million or more last year, solidifying the region as a top market for high-end condo buyers.

This year kicked off with two sales exceeding $5 million. The first was an 8,000-square-foot condo on Goethe Street that sold for $6.1 million, or about $760 per square foot. The other was a 4,300-square-foot unit at No. 9 Walton that sold for $5.65 million, or $1,300 per square foot.

In Chicago’s priciest condo sale, a trust named after Donald E. Thompson acquired two condos in the St. Regis tower for just under $9 million. The purchase included a $6.48 million unit and a $2.5 million unit, both on the 52nd floor of the 101-story 363 East Wacker Drive.

The seller, SRC Residential, is an entity of GD Holdings, which bought 84 units in the tower for $117 million in November. GD Holdings sold three of these units in January for a combined $17.1 million.

The 37-story Palmolive Building, at 159 East Walton Place, was built in 1929 as the headquarters for the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company. The Near North Side property later became famous as the longtime home of Playboy Enterprises from the 1960s to the 1980s. It was converted into condos in the early 2000s.

— Andrew Terrell