Affordability is one of the biggest factors driving sales in Bronzeville. “If you choose this house,” says Sheila Dantzler, the Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent who represented the Edwards, of their 3,000-square-foot lot with a two-car garage built on a standard 25-by-125-foot lot. feet, “And drop it off at Lincoln Park, that would be $1.5 million, easy. In Lakeview, Irving Park, Lincoln Square, it would be over a million dollars with the same finishes.

Including 2021, Bronzeville has seen a five-year streak of new home sales that is unmatched in other parts of the city, not strictly in numbers but in how it transforms a neighborhood. On January 24, Crain’s will present a three-part podcast that explores the history of Bronzeville through the lens of housing, from the era of enforced segregation to today.

In the first decade of the 21st century, Bronzeville had more than 3,000 vacant lots, according to Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, the legacy of the demolition of several Chicago Housing Authority projects and the divestment and other issues that led to the demolition of decrepit buildings.

Since 2017, many of these lots have been reactivated with newly constructed homes and townhouses. At that time, Crain’s had over 250 homes, townhouses and condos selling for $500,000 or more in the area bounded by the lakefront to the east, the Stevenson and Dan Ryan freeways to the north and west, and to the south, 47th Street. east of Cottage Grove Avenue and 51st Street west of Cottage Grove.

Not all Bronzeville homes are that expensive. Many condominiums and older homes sell for more affordable prices. But it is mainly new high-end constructions that replace vacant land.

Among them is a set of 10 townhouses on Lake Park Avenue, about two blocks from lakefront Burnham Park. Five have been sold, at prices in excess of $700,000, according to Paulette Edwards, who represents the homes with another Coldwell Banker agent, Sybil Martin.

The buyers, Edwards said, are “30-40 year old professionals, computer scientists, doctors.” The prices they pay would allow them to stay in better known neighborhoods, she said, “but now it’s cool to say, ‘I live in Bronzeville. You should come see.

Like the generation that turned Lincoln Park into an affluent neighborhood, buyers who come to Bronzeville see it as an opportunity.

“It’s one of the last places in Chicago where you can get a new 4,000 square foot home for under $1 million,” says Michaela Gordon, an @properties agent whose buyer clients have paid $815,000. dollars for a new 3,600 square foot home. house on 42nd Street in December. “It has a variety of architecture typical of Old Town Chicago, and you’re not displacing anyone ‘by buying a house that’s been on vacant land for a long time,’ so why wouldn’t you buy in Bronzeville?”

In 2021, crime in Bronzeville was down 15% from four years earlier, although, as is the case with many parts of the city, it was up from 2020, a period of relatively low crime. low during pandemic shutdowns.

Edwards, of Coldwell Banker, and others recognize that neighborhood amenities are just coming to Bronzeville. Newcomers include the Friistyle restaurant on Prairie Avenue. There are cafes, a Mariano’s grocery store and other mainstays, but the amenities usually associated with a hip neighborhood are “growing surprisingly slowly,” Dantzler says.

Curiously, the pandemic may have overshadowed Bronzeville’s relative lack of amenities, Dantzler says. These days, “you don’t expect to be walking down the street for coffee, for dinner,” she says. “You expect to be at home, in your house or in your garden.”

As retailers large and small look to reopen new locations, they will find a population of affluent homeowners in Bronzeville.

Last year through November, the median price of homes sold in Bronzeville was well over $550,000, according to data from the Chicago Association of Realtors. That’s higher than some popular North Side neighborhoods, including Avondale ($497,500) and Portage Park ($370,000), and higher than Bridgeport on the South Side ($453,000). Citywide, the median price of homes sold through November was $318,000.

Prices are rising rapidly in Bronzeville, largely due to the energy generated from past sales, but also because building material costs have skyrocketed in the supply chain downturn. When Crain’s started tracking the boom in 2017, $500,000 was an impressive benchmark. Now that’s old news. In 2021, 14 homes sold for $700,000 or more, reaching just under $890,000.

Coming this year, says Edwards of Coldwell Banker, is a five-home development on King Drive with prices in the $950,000s. With a long experience in selling in the neighborhood, she says she is “absolutely convinced” that the demand is there.

Inevitably, the rapidly rising prices in Bronzeville exclude some people. Dantzler thinks the next alternative is Fuller Park, west of Bronzeville, across the Dan Ryan. With her husband, Erik Dantzler of R&D Builders, she built a 3,000 square foot home on Wells Street in Fuller Park and sold it for $460,000 in December 2020. Another builder is offering three new homes on Princeton Avenue, with prices from $399,000 to $499,000.

The Dantzlers plan to break ground on another soon, priced at $500,000.

“A lot of people who could afford Bronzeville two years ago at $600,000 can’t afford it now at more than $700,000,” Dantzler says. “Prices have gone up so much in a short time.”