If you live anywhere on the North Side, you've likely noticed an old home on your block being demolished at some point. It's no surprise that developers are tearing down older homes and multi-unit properties at an alarming rate, but what's fascinating to see is the contrast between demolition activity on single family homes between the city's north and south sides. Chicago Cityscape has crunched the numbers and created interactive maps that illustrate this difference between the two sides of the city. The teardowns that are depicted in their maps are ones that are being demolished to make way for a new construction. While whole stretches of the South Side have been demolished, often times, all that remains is a vacant lot. Meanwhile on the North Side, pricey single family homes and mansions are often replacing two- or three-flats.
In the last decade, teardowns peaked in 2006 during the last real estate boom. However, they have been on the rise since 2009. According to Chicago Cityscapes numbers, during this ten year period, 1,827 of these teardowns were single family homes while 936 were smaller multi-unit properties (generally two-, three-, and four-flats). The new construction homes coming to these neighborhoods are not cheap either. There's quite a broad range with the average annual cost of the new homes built as well. The average cost of a newly constructed home was $498,765 in 2012 and shot up to $2,774,516 in 2010.
·Teardown maps [Chicago Cityscape]
·10 years of teardowns [Chicago Cityscape blog]
Loading comments...