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Bloomingdale Trail Has Developers Optimistic About Rising Property Values

By DNAinfo Staff on July 28, 2014 8:01am

  Real estate agents and developers have their eye on the area around the Bloomingdale Trail, expecting property values to rise as the 2.7-milelong park comes closer to completion.
Bloomingdale Trail real estate
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HUMBOLDT PARK — Real estate agents and developers have their eye on the area around the Bloomingdale Trail, expecting property values to rise as the 2.7-milelong park nears completion.

While they don't know how high, they are jumping into action expecting prices to spike once work on the Bloomingdale Trail — the centerpiece of "The 606" park and trail system set to span Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Wicker Park and Bucktown — is completed next year.

"I didn't know about the trail until after I bought the property. I saw this neighborhood as a place that draws people looking for affordable homes," said Sean Walsh, who has developed properties across Chicago and is building four town houses at 1845 N. St. Louis Ave., within a block of the park. "The trail will only help me. How much is my value going to spike, I don't know, but I do expect it to spike."

Real estate brokerage Redfin analyzed 1,172 residential listings in the blocks around the trail since 2012.

Prices of homes two to four blocks from the trail jumped from $186 per square foot to $234 per square foot since 2012.

Within a block of the trail, homes are listed even higher, with prices jumping from $206 per square foot to $254 per square foot.

Part of that comes from the rising demand for property across the four neighborhoods, real estate agents said. But there's also a belief that the trail will change prices in the neighborhoods even more.

"Bucktown and Wicker Park are high price-point neighborhoods, so the trail would likely affect the neighborhoods a little farther west,"  said Redfin real estate agent Renee Leung, who also lives two blocks from the trail in Bucktown. "If the trail does prove to be more popular with locals and tourists, it may make property in those neighborhoods more valuable."

In Humboldt Park, developers like DenMax Corp. have been buying, according to real estate agent Ivona Kutermankiewicz, who is helping sell those properties.

Among DenMax's properties are six new town houses being built at Wabansia and Central Park avenues, about a block from the western end of the trail. Now under construction, those homes were initially listed at $349,900. The listing prices were raised to $399,000 in March in anticipation of the new park, Kutermankiewicz said.

"There's a lot of interest in those properties ever since the trail begun [taking] a little bit more concrete shape," Kutermankiewicz said. "My client has been buying a lot more additional land."

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