Chicago Cityscape New feature updates

http://chicagocityscape.com

Purchased an Address Snapshot? We just upgraded it

We've made some improvements to Address Snapshots on Chicago Cityscape, as well as the "additional snapshots" that come with membership. These changes are also available to anyone who's purchased an Address Snapshot à la carte. This is another example of how we're constantly improving the value of our service. 

Changes within Address Snapshot include (changes apply to Chicago properties only unless otherwise noted): 

  1. Whether the property is eligible to have an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU)
  2. Whether property has unused zoning capacity and could add housing without a zoning change
  3. Chicago's 2021 updates to the Affordable Requirements Ordinance are now part of Zoning Assessment
  4. Fair Market Rents (as calculated by HUD) for the local ZIP Code (applies in all of Illinois)
  5. Whether the property is in one of the new "predominance of the block" areas near the 606/Bloomingdale Trail and in part of Pilsen
  6. Property sales data has been updated through March 30, 2021 (applies in all of Cook County)

screenshot of "additional snapshots" section of the Address Snapshot

Changes in the "additional snapshots":

  1. Environmental Snapshot: Energy usage data for buildings required to participate now has 2019 data, and shows new data (water usage, Chicago energy rating, and Energy Star score). 
  2. Land Use Snapshot: Minor improvements here in speed and design.
  3. Transportation Snapshot: Major improvements, to show all nearby transit options, Divvy bike stations, and links to analysis about the frequency of service at each transit stop. Plus, information about where people who live nearby go to work, and where people who work nearby go home after work. 
  4. Lending & Investment Snapshot: We added new demographics (including income) as well as maps of three publicly-funded project categories (TIF, SBIF, and NOF). 

When you re-load the Address Snapshot you purchased, look for the "additional snapshots" section. Find your purchases here.

If you want continuous access to this information about any property in Chicago and Cook County, consider subscribing to a Cityscape Real Estate Pro membership. Use coupon code kezLeXsx to save 10% for new memberships for up to 12 months. 

Cityscape integrates ARO 2021 map

City Council adopted revisions to the ARO, or Affordable Requirements Ordinance, a law that mandates housing developers set aside some of their units and rent them affordably. It does away with pilot areas and organizes the city into 5 geographies, which are now on Cityscape.

Read a summary of the changes on Elrod Friedman's (a law firm) website

We've annotated the screenshot below to highlight these changes.

Look up ARO information with Address Snapshot, scroll down to "Zoning Assessment" and click the "Expand ARO" button (the next screenshot shows what that looks like).

The map below shows the five geographies. 


Property sales data for 2021's first quarter is now up

We just added the 37,499 property sales in Cook County to our database. Our database of property sales stretches from 2016 to the 2021 Q1. (We update our database about two weeks after the end of each quarter.)

The chart above shows the pattern of property transfers in Chicago from 2019 to the most recently ended quarter (2021 Q1). The COVID-19 "shelter in place" order started March 21, 2020, so a full year has completed since that time. The blue column represents all transfers, and the green column represents transfers with a "full consideration" price of $100 or more.


This data is populated/displays on Chicago Cityscape in the following ways:

  1. Address Snapshot - We'll flag the address you're looking up if there was a recent sale, and show nearby sales. This is useful for doing a comps analysis and includes all properties subject to real estate transfer tax reporting*.
  2. Place Snapshot - Show a map and spreadsheet of all* of the property sales in one of our 38,000 predefined maps, or draw one yourself.
  3. Lending & Investment Snapshot - This augments the data in the other two snapshots by summarizing the property sales in a given place, and comparing it to Chicago and Cook County as wholes. (For example, check out the property sales data in the Humboldt Park INVEST South/West area, which is unlocked for everyone to peruse.)

* Some property transactions are not subject to the real estate transfer tax but are subject to reporting. View all transfers in Cook County in our database.

Amenities & Social infrastructure gets major overhaul

We updated our Amenities & Social infrastructure database today with nearly 400 additional locations representing our selected categories. 

New locations

This update included 193 locations obtained from OpenStreetMap – 90 additional restaurants, 13 non-profit offices, 65 convenience stores, 24 banks, 21 health clinics, 7 supermarkets and more. 

Secondly, we added 192 federally-qualified health centers in Cook County. We added this based on a suggestion from a member who needed to know where these were in relation to the properties they acquire for long-term affordable housing. 

Thirdly, we updated the Chicago Public Schools locations, removing four schools that CPS closed on July 1, 2020 (Frazier ES, Chicago Virtual ES/HS, Foundations MS/HS, and Hope HS).

While Google Maps has the largest database of places in Chicagoland, only ours can be filtered by area (useful for doing market analysis, creating listing brochures, and assessing the value of a property) and downloaded. Our map will also summarize and count the number of locations in each category. 

Get a summary of the amenities & social infrastructure in any given Place Snapshot (including ones your draw yourself).

It can always improve so send your suggestions for new businesses or locations that are closed and need to be removed. 

What else is in the overhaul?

As for that overhaul promised in the headline, we made two big changes:

  1. All locations show related icons - a coffee mug for a café or bakery, a heartbeat for a health clinic, and fries for a fast food restaurant (see the screenshot below). 
  2. Amenities & Social infrastructure is integrated in 100% of our Place Snapshots and every Personal Place that you draw yourself. The screenshot of Little Village below shows 318 locations, including 124 restaurants!

Screenshot showing the new icons

Screenshot showing all of the amenities in Little Village


ADU events will help property owners know what they can build

There are nine upcoming and free events to learn about Chicago’s new ADU ordinance. 

RSVP for each event to receive the webinar link. 

Additionally, the Chicago Department of Housing is hosting three webinars in May and June:

Separately, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Chicago chapter and AIA Chicago are co-hosting three webinars with Department of Buildings deputy commissioner Grant Ullrich and zoning administrator Patrick Murphey who will also talk about three different topics. Registration closes two days prior to each event. 

I think the last event on May 26 will be especially popular, as that is the question that I have received most via the Chicago Cityscape ADU Portal: How does one legalize an existing interior apartment (most often a basement unit)?



See Carmin’s future backyard house

See Carmin’s future backyard ADU I’ve talked about Carmin Ballou a couple of times on this blog. Her parents moved in with her, her partner, and their two school-age children right before the COVID-19 pandemic started to upend lives in March 2020. Many combined and multi-generational families yea...

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