St. Regis condo trades for $7M in loss for sellers

A luxury St. Regis condo sale turned out to be a loss for the seller, even as the deal provides another sign that deep-pocketed buyers have waited long enough after staying on the sidelines in 2023.

Buyers whose identities have not been disclosed paid $7 million for the 6,100-square-foot condo spanning the entire 78th floor of the St. Regis tower, at 363 East Wacker Drive, Crain’s reported. The sale price equates to roughly $1,147 per square foot.

Carrie McCormick of @properties represented the sellers, Blake and Beth Horio, as well as the buyers. The Horios bought the full-floor condo in the 95-story building for nearly $8.2 million in December 2021 and put it on the market a month later, asking $10 million.

So far, it’s the strongest sign of the resale value for condos at the highest end of the St. Regis, as previous deals near or above the price mark have been sales by the property’s developer Magellan.

The condo underwent several price chops, most recently getting lowered to $7.6 million in November. The couple also tried to rent out the space in 2022, seeking $50,000 a month.

Even though buyers at this level rarely use mortgages to buy property, opting for all-cash deals, the city’s luxury condo market has also been stymied by reduced vibrancy in the downtown area since the pandemic. At lower levels of the market, higher interest rates contributed to home sales falling by 20 percent in Chicago last year.

Despite luxury Chicago condos often selling for less than when they last changed hands, there’s been several notable high-end deals to start the year, as there’s a potential bounce back in the works for the market after a slight dip in mortgage rates.

The most eye-popping condo sale of 2024 occurred in January, when the 9,000-square-foot unit on the eighth floor of 65 East Goethe Street traded for $9.3 million, which would have been the fifth-most expensive Chicago-area home sale of 2023 if the deal happened a month sooner.

Last week, a 3,200-square-foot condo on the 29th floor of the Park Tower, on North Michigan Avenue, traded for $2.8 million. Fox Sports television personality Colin Cowherd bought a unit of the same size in the same building for $3.25 million in February.

The St. Regis sale marked the priciest transaction in the building since September 2022, when a two-story condo sold to Mexican mining billionaire German Larrea for a whopping $20.5 million. The building’s top sale in 2023 came in just shy of $6.54 million, the outlet reported.

There are little details of the Horios’ former unit, as no pictures were provided with the listing. However, the couple did confirm that it was “not fully finished.”

—Quinn Donoghue

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