Crain's: Rehabs stabilizing market in this South Side neighborhood

Via The Chicago Neighborhoods

You might have seen this over at Worlee's Concerned Citizen's of Chatham fb page. Perhaps this is the expected outcome that we've been waiting for with Chatham referred to by Dennis Rodkin as "a longtime center of Chicago's middle-class black population":

In the past 12 months, nearly one in four of the houses sold in the neighborhood have been recent rehabs, typically by builders and investors, according to Crain's analysis of Midwest Real Estate Data records. Of 199 houses sold in the period, 48 were rehabs.

That's 24 percent, a far higher proportion than in other South and West Side neighborhoods that were hit hard by the downturn. Rehabs were fewer in nearby neighborhoods South Shore (15 percent), Park Manor and South Chicago (both 17 percent) and Auburn Gresham (19 percent).

"You're watching Chatham get rejuvenated," said Virgil Landry, a rehabber and Kale Realty agent.

In January, Landry paid $39,000 for a house on 90th Street that had recently completed a seven-year foreclosure process. He put the four-bedroom house through a rehab that included repairing a faulty foundation and installing new flooring, kitchen appliances, furnace and air conditioner. Landry put the 2,000-square-foot home half a block from Tuley Park on the market in late July, asking $199,000.

The median price of a house sold in Chatham has jumped this year, largely because of the higher-priced sales of rehabs. At the end of June, the median sale price of a house was slightly more than $120,000, up 42 percent from the year-earlier figure, $85,000, according to the Chicago Association of Realtors. That's not evidence of skyrocketing home values but of the shift from a market that was heavy on bargain-priced foreclosure sales last year to resales of improved homes this year. Data provided by Renovo Financial, a Chicago-based lender that funds many rehabbers' projects, shows that rehabbed houses in Chatham are selling at an average of nearly $212,000 this year.

Chatham was hit hard in the foreclosure crisis. At its worst, in 2009, the neighborhood had 4.2 foreclosure filings per 100 properties, according to the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University. Some neighborhoods, including Burnside, Chicago Lawn and East Garfield park, peaked at more than seven filings per 100. Yet like most of the South Side, Chatham saw a stark slide in home values. By November 2011, they had dropped 57 percent from their December 2007 peak, according to a study Crain's published last fall.

Not all of the rehabs are former foreclosures. Some are homes that longtime owners sold at depressed prices.

Unfortunately I'm not a real estate buff nor do I have any connections to the real estate business. With that said I wonder how many of the people who bought these rehabbed homes plan to put down roots in Chatham. Here's hoping we got new residents who plan to grow old in this longtime center for Chicago's Black middle class.