All Forum Posts by: Chi Zhang

My understanding from talking to lawyer, contractors and city staffs over the years is that water department has the oldest record on DU, and it's typically not public info readily avail. (I'm not sure if FOIA would pull water dept records). When people dispute the units given on the zoning cert, water dept records is usually the first place they look into, especially for questionable "grandfathered in" units that's no longer conforming.

West Town area near Chicago ave and Racine. Zoning change took about a year, things got delayed a bit when Ald. Burnett went up for re-election.. We completely rehabbed the property.

In Chicago the city issues certificate of zoning compliance for bldgs with 5 units or less, sellers can request it, its typically required as part of a property sale. The requesting party can put down however many legal units (they believe) the bldg has, it's up to the city to research their records to match and either certify the units or deny the request if theres a mismatch. 

Ask seller for a zoning cert, it will tell you how many legal units the bldg has.

Investment Info:

Large multi-family (5+ units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $400,000
Cash invested: $450,000

Orig a mix-used 2 unit in B1-2 zoning, a zoning amendment was obtained to up zone to B2-3 within TOD district, which allowed for total of 5 units with increased total bldg sqft. Zoning amendment took about 1 year. Rehab/addition took another year. Initial purchase $400k, rehab cost $850k, current appraised value $1.5Mil. Monthly gross rent $10k.

How did you finance this deal?

Cash orig purchase. Commercial 70% LTV loan on rehab cost.

How did you add value to the deal?

By obtaining the zoning change, with the combination of the location being in the Chicago TOD district, the unit count was increased from 2 to 5, and total new rentable sqft of 6000 sqft, with zero commercial component.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Blueleaf Lending, Tyler Knudsvig