Duplex Development/Construction Chicago Suburbs

[Rob Blumenstein]

Evening all, 

Hope this post finds you well, feels like we have been running in circles for the last few months with no clear path in site. To which I turn to the most trusted community in RE.

Myself and two of my business partners are looking to start our journey in Real Estate development and am looking for some advice, we have experience in owning and managing rentals so none of that is new to us...just building the thing is.

We are looking to start developing duplex homes across the Chicagoland Suburbs but cannot find the right person to talk to that can give us a clear idea of where to start. We talked to a few builders and got quotes for $250+/sqft... nice :/ As well as some architects, to which we still have no clear vision. 

Really we are just looking for a place to start and the type of people to talk to. We feel like a GC is going to be the best place for us to start as we can get a ballpark on "reasonable" pricing as well as other referrals needed from there.

All in all any feedback, help, ideas, guidance, referrals or just anything else would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from some of you and your knowledge/ expertise is greatly appreciated.

-Rob,Greg, and Al

[Robert Ellis]

Quote from @Rob Blumenstein:

Evening all, 

Hope this post finds you well, feels like we have been running in circles for the last few months with no clear path in site. To which I turn to the most trusted community in RE.

Myself and two of my business partners are looking to start our journey in Real Estate development and am looking for some advice, we have experience in owning and managing rentals so none of that is new to us...just building the thing is.

We are looking to start developing duplex homes across the Chicagoland Suburbs but cannot find the right person to talk to that can give us a clear idea of where to start. We talked to a few builders and got quotes for $250+/sqft... nice :/ As well as some architects, to which we still have no clear vision. 

Really we are just looking for a place to start and the type of people to talk to. We feel like a GC is going to be the best place for us to start as we can get a ballpark on "reasonable" pricing as well as other referrals needed from there.

All in all any feedback, help, ideas, guidance, referrals or just anything else would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing from some of you and your knowledge/ expertise is greatly appreciated.

-Rob,Greg, and Al

 I'd start with a real estate agent sending you all the new construction 2-4 family styles that have sold and pick one that is small and compact and sells for a premium. I designed a 2 bed 1 bath stacked triplex that fits on a 30' wide lot with 3' side yards and we can build it for $174 a sq ft hard cost. we do them where the land is 10% of after repaired asset value which in our market is 50k approx. we study multifamily trends and stay with it. I'd recommend pushing density to 3 or 4 they all finance the same. we picked 3 because of the 35' height allowance in our area. here is a rendering to help paint the picture. our target appraisal value is 550k on the first few and pushing them to more than 600k as we sell some or keep them but if you are the only one building multifamily it's important to highlight the importance of appraisal and selling or disposing of some assets to create comparable to be used. our market has very little 2-4 units built because of economies of scale we are the only builder doing this style and we control the full process and it is a high barrier to entry where we are at. we are able to build at a lower cost now than almost buying a duplex because they are so small. each one is 668 sq ft total of 2004 sq ft.