Downtown Rental Market Looking Good

A recent article in the Chicago Real Estate Daily talks about the surprisingly strong numbers for downtown rental properties. Although the article is about the greater Chicago Downtown market, it does call out two South Loop rental properties:

“People are worried about their jobs,” says Greg Mutz, CEO of Amli Residential Partners LLC, a Chicago-based apartment owner. “When you’re in that kind of mind-set, you don’t want to be illiquid, and you want to have flexibility.”

The apartment market is “not as bad as I thought it would be,” he says.

Amli completed construction last year on a 440-unit building at 900 S. Clark St. While the high-rise is more than 80% leased, it faces competition from other new buildings in the South Loop, where developers have been especially busy.

Compounding the supply problem, Chicago-based developer Centrum Properties Inc. recently decided to convert a new 342-unit condo project at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street into apartments.