John Sullivan, a 27-year-old renter in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, hopes the third time is the charm.
Twice in the past three months Sullivan has put in offers on condos in his neighborhood, but after receiving the results of a property inspection broke the contracts. The culprit both times? Potential water damage problems tied to split-face block construction.
Problems with improperly treated or maintained split-face concrete blocks aren’t anything new. Some home inspectors have been railing against the use of the construction material in Chicago’s small condo buildings for a decade.
But keeping the concrete sealed and water repellent might be a project that falls by the wayside at a time when the number of bank-owned foreclosures is on the rise, other units are occupied by renters rather than by owners, and many condo associations have dwindling reserves.
“Now, five, six, seven, eight years after it’s been built, we’re starting to see the effects of bad construction,” said Dan Pape, a principal at Hudson Parker Realty & Finance Group in Chicago. “Usually it’s a 50-50 chance (of a problem). Unfortunately, it’s that high.”
Sullivan didn’t know much about concrete block, but the home inspector on the first property gave him a few articles to read. He did some research, including talking to a colleague who had trouble selling his condo because of its split-face block construction. Five days before closing, Sullivan got a second inspection, and the results sealed his decision to not proceed with the closing.
At the second condo where he had a contract, the home inspector didn’t even have to look inside to be able to tell there were potential problems.
Kurt Mitenbuler, who operates an eponymously named home inspection firm in Evanston, is among those inspectors who have been warning about split-face block for years.
“Some of them seem to work OK for reasons that we’re still trying to figure out,” he said. “I’m not saying don’t buy it, but we need to look deeper.”
The more education a buyer has about a property, the better, said Mary Ellen Considine, an agent at Keller Williams Realty in Chicago.
More Top Picks Best Sensory Brushes For Therapy
“Buyers are driven by their emotion, not their logic,” she said. “This is the biggest investment you’re going to make.”
Buyers also should also check into the reserves of a condo building’s homeowners association to determine the level of financial reserves for building repairs.
As for sellers, Chicago home inspector Steve Hier, of Miller-Hier Enterprises, recommends they know what maintenance has been done on their building and be able to show proof of it because potential buyers are getting more savvy.
“Before, people were a little less concerned because the appreciation on these things was 20 percent a year, and they were selling (the unit) in two years, and it didn’t matter,” Hier said. “These were starter homes for people. That’s not the case anymore.”
Sullivan has since found a brick duplex in Lincoln Park. He’s awaiting the results of the property inspection and, tentatively, is closing on the unit in mid-March.
Winning projects: LISC/Chicago recently recognized community developments, businesses and city leaders that improved Chicago, and two residential projects made the cut in the 17th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards.
One was the transformation of Hollywood House, a 13-story, 197-unit apartment building for seniors in Edgewater that was purchased by Heartland Housing Inc. with the help of the Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credit program. The building wasn’t emptied while renovations and repairs were performed, 90 percent of the apartments were preserved as affordable housing, and 127 of them are for seniors who earn 60 percent or less of the Chicago median income.
Heartland received the $15,000 Polk Bros. Foundation Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Award.
The other, winning the award for an outstanding for-profit neighborhood project, was Holsten Real Estate Development Corp. for its development of Wilson Yard in Uptown on the site of a former CTA rail yard. The project was many years in the making and controversial because it included 178 affordable, rather than market-rate, rental units, and Target and Aldi stores.
The first residents began moving in nearly a year ago, and it is now 100 percent leased.