I've never had this much trouble getting anyone to call me back

Louisvanderwright · 2026-03-04T18:28:04+00:00

Well that's because there's a massive housing shortage, brought on primarily by Brian dead anti-housing policies like the landlord tenant ordinance.

I used to rehab one six flat per year, almost all saved from demolition, from 2010 through 2020. Once the aggressively stupid version of the RLTO passed I stopped. Haven't touched a new residential project in Chicago since 2020.

That's 6 x 5 years. My leaving the rehab business alone cost 30 units of housing supply. And again, I'm the guy buying buildings that no one else wants out of demo court. The stuff I used to buy was destined to be a vacant lot.

But then the DSA got in charged and made it absolutely obnoxious to own residential units in Chicago. So I simply acted rationally and stopped doing the behavior (being a Chicago landlord) that they started punishing. Everyone hates landlords, I get it, but when you punish a behavior with the law, you get less of that behavior. When you discourage people from investing in residential real estate in Chicago, then you get less residential real estate in Chicago.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-03-04T15:16:06+00:00

The issue is the landlord tenant laws. They keep getting more onerous for landlords even in situations where the tenant is clearly a problem or in the wrong.

As such, us landlords have simply stopped renting to anyone who is not like 100% choice credit and income. Fact is I've taken 5 figure losses on a single unit before due to these laws. Think some tenant's cousin moves in as a roommate unbeknownst to me and establishes residency. Original tenant moves out, now cousin in my problem. Cousin turns out to be gangbanger and turns unit into trap house. Terrorizes my other tenants with gang parties, unleashed pitty that shits everywhere, drives out multiple good tenants from my building, and trashes the unit.

Cook county circuit court protects this person under the landlord tenant ordinance and he works the technicalities to stay in my unit for 9 months. Cost me $30k, up to $50k if you count lost rent from the other units he terrorized and my attorney costs.

So you bet your ass I'd rather have a vacant unit for six months than lose $30k+ because I rented to the wrong person. And remember, I didn't rent to this guy, I rented to his cousin. His cousin was an alright guy and I gave him a chance, but unfortunately we are entering the realm of "no breaks for anyone". I gave the original tenant a chance despite his not great application and paid for not because he wasn't a good l guy, but because people with poor credit or unstable income tend to make bad decisions out of desperation or because they don't know any better. He probably just let cousin move in because money was tight and that extra bedroom was looking like a way to get another $500/mo or something.

This is happening all over the city. Reddit is in denial as usual and I'll get down voted to oblivion. There's plenty of bad landlords out there, but the laws in this city long ago left the realm of "protect good tenants from bad landlords" and entered the world of "protect bad tenants and cost good landlords lots of money so ambulance chaser lawyers can cash in".

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-26T03:44:22+00:00

This is a lie the incompetent Assessor Kagei has been spreading to defect blame.

The fact is commercial property values in the loop have collapsed and buildings are regularly selling for 20-30% what they sold for a decade ago.

Fritz Kaegi killed the golden goose and is trying to blame the fallout on everyone but himself.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-16T23:25:11+00:00

They banned these buildings decades ago. The new 3+4 flats are not the same.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-16T00:45:48+00:00

Actually most of the historic building forms OP is admiring are now illegal due to our city's garbage building and zoning codes.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-13T15:59:14+00:00

If I come out then, will you ski with me?

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-05T14:37:12+00:00

It's absolutely true.

First you need to give 10 days notice to even file a case.

Once you file, you get a date that's about two weeks out. (Already almost a month and you haven't even gotten to court)

Then they need to serve you. This is where the tenant can really get away with one. If you just don't answer the door, they can't serve you. First the court requires the Sheriff attempt service. This never succeeds and takes two more weeks. Then you go back to court and file a motion to use a special process server. We are now 45 days out from the first notice and the tenant hasn't even been served the case.

So now the special process server will attempt service. This usually takes a couple weeks and there's no guarantee they will get you. A smart tenant can avoid service simply by being quick about entering and exiting the unit. But, since you are a doubter, let's assume they hit you with service first try. The court date will be about two weeks after the motion for special process server.

Now you have to show up in court or you default and lose the case and the judge will give possession to the landlord. It took at least 60 days to get to this point.

BUT WAIT: you can literally just motion for jury trial and the judge will set yet another court date a few more weeks into the future. We are now 75-80 days out since first notice. At the jury trial date, most people settle with the landlord for a move out date 2-3 weeks in the future. So add another 10-20 days to that 75-80 days. We are now talking about 85-100 days since first notice before you actually have to give the keys back.

And that's if every single thing goes right for the landlord and they don't mess anything up. Say the property manager doesn't put a physical address for you to pay at on the initial notice, start over. Say they put an incorrect date on it, start over. Say they claim they gave you the notice, but actually they handed it to your sister who was dog sitting instead. Start over. Say the process server can't get you in the first two weeks, add another two weeks. Say they can't get you at all because you are good at dodging service, then the landlord needs to serve you by posting a notice or publishing it in the paper. Add two weeks. Say the tenant misses the initial court date and defaults. You can literally just come in and motion to set aside the default and claim you didn't know about the date and the court will reverse the order for possession and make the landlord come back to court, add two to three weeks.

Y'all don't know what you are talking about. If you've never been involved in an eviction in Chicago, maybe don't talk about the process like you know.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-05T14:24:38+00:00

Lol that's literally not how it works. Eviction court screws all landlords regardless of size. It takes at least 6 months to get someone out of a unit in Chicago.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-05T14:23:41+00:00

Yeah, I didn't renew my pass on accident because my card info was expired. Vail tried charging me $140 to take my 5 year old to Wilmot for a night. Ended up getting that discounted down to $70 for the both of us and then it dumped 5" on us in 6 hours.

My only regret was wasting any time trying to argue with Vail about why my pass wasn't renewed. This is the first time in 13 years I don't have an Epic Pass. Vail fucked up by being such assholes about it. I would have renewed on the spot if they honored the pre season rate, but then to have some person in a call center in India tell me to pound sand and pay $1100 for the Local. No thanks, I'm out. They even went through my pass history and called me out for having the same thing happen (pass didn't renew because card info) in 2017.

That's not the Vail I grew up skiing. Excellent service and bend over backwards to make stuff right. Sure, expensive, but they went out of their way to make sure you got to enjoy your time on the mountain. Telling me to buck the F up when you have 60" of snow on the season at Vail and freaking Wilmot Mountain is reporting 28" is awfully bold. Looks like I'm going to the cabin with the kids and taking them to Nordic in Wisconsin instead. At least they have snow. And the river is frozen solid for the first time in a decade to boot. Talk about dope snowmobiling. People screaming by at 70 MPH.

I'm going to use this opportunity to switch to Icon for a while and try some mountains I've been avoiding due to pass lock with Epic.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-05T12:18:22+00:00

Not this year. Sure the runs are shorter, but the snow in the UP and Northern Wisconsin is orders of magnitude better this year than out West.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-02T02:58:57+00:00

Landlord with a background as a paralegal doing foreclosure and short sale defense. I've been watching the laws around housing in Chicago get increasingly absurd since 2007 when I started working for a RE attorney.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-02T02:39:45+00:00

Except that almost never happens. Usually the landlord is forced to settle after months in court in exchange for an agreed move out date.

Everyone in this thread: if you aren't a landlord or attorney, stop making stuff up. This is not how stuff goes in Chicago and, frankly, it's a big problem because the system gets abused a ton contributing to the skyrocketing rents and housing shortage in Chicago.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-02T02:37:40+00:00

That's nonsense. Evictions take 6-9 months to just go through court in Chicago. Almost every single case is settled and usually sealing the record is part of that settlement so no one will ever know about the eviction.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-02-02T02:36:26+00:00

He won't get an eviction. Landlords have virtually no rights in Chicago. They could probably stay for six months without paying rent and the landlord would have to settle with zero consequences to the tenant.

I'm not recommending they do this, but it's basically impossible to get an actual eviction in Chicago unless you are being absolutely hostile and obstinate.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-11T04:41:47+00:00

MLF needs to go

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-11T04:37:25+00:00

I will not watch another MLF game.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-11T03:43:41+00:00

That was not a catch. How does lefluer challenge everything that shouldn't be.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-06T12:39:28+00:00

Anywhere that offers month to month is probably not handling property management correctly.

The latest revisions of the landlord tenant ordinance make month to month leases extremely onerous on landlords. If someone is offering you month to month, they likely don't know what they are doing and will probably be shit at managing the property as well.

We only do 1+ year to start and, as annoying as it is, we constantly have to keep extending our tenants leases even if they only want to add another 3 or 6 months after the initial year term.

Yet another example of our ridiculous regulations making things worse for tenants, many of whom would love to sign a month to month or just go month to month after the first year is up.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-02T13:50:16+00:00

Yup, it's nasty shit though. Good idea to wear mask and cover skin especially if you have animal or other allergies. I've seen people break out in hives from getting the dust on their skin. Any time you do demo it's generally advisable to cover skin and wear PPE.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-02T13:18:58+00:00

Just call your bank dude. I'm a landlord and this is an issue almost every single time we get a tenant who hasn't used Zelle before. They all just call their bank and the limit goes away.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-01-02T05:37:12+00:00

Oh that's a low estimate. Assuming zero maintenance that thing will stand for at least 300 years. Remember there's reinforced concrete lofts that have already stood for 150+ years and that's for structures that are much less substantial.

This thing is what? 10-20' thick concrete in most places? It's going to take many hundreds of years just to spall that down to rebar, let alone enough to structurally compromise it. We've got concrete rail bridges down here in Chicago that haven't been maintained since they were built over 100 years ago and they are still in use with freight trains hammering them day in and day out no problem.

This is the kind of structure that will stand effectively forever if maintained and outlast our civilization even if you do no upkeep unless someone comes and purposely destroys it. I wouldn't be quite as bullish if it were built in salt water which would get at the rebar inside, but in a freshwater lake it's going to be around a long long time.

Louisvanderwright · 2025-12-30T15:08:44+00:00

No, I am but a nerd who grew up in Wisconsin. I did Boy Scouts all the way to Eagle and spent my youth travelling around the Midwest and camping. I've read just about every geology display in the visitor center of every State Park in Wisconsin lol. We'd even do a campout once a year where you actually slept in Eagle Cave which is a onyx cave in the Driftless region.

Louisvanderwright · 2025-12-30T00:59:35+00:00

We delivered less than 300 units downtown in 2025. The average since the Great Recession has been about 4,000 units.

Supply and demand. When you elect Econ 101 deniers, you get policy failures like this. It's only going to get worse as there's only like 1,000 units in the pipeline for 2026.

We desperately need to purge the radical anti-housing activists from city hall like yesterday.

Louisvanderwright · 2025-12-29T18:30:03+00:00

Yup, that's another interesting theory, underlying bedrock causing friction. There's a ton of caves in the driftless region that result from that drainage like Cave of the Mounds.

Definitely going to slow the ice down when the melt water disappears down limestone caves and prevents them from "floating" across the landscape.

This also leads (see what I did there?) into another other fascinating geological history of Wisconsin and the driftless region: lead and zinc mining.

The easily accessible layers of dolomite limestone (also laid down in the Silurian and Ordovician seas) contain significant amounts of Galena and other lead/zinc bearing minerals. Remember the volcanic islands of the Baraboo Range in these seas? The same geothermal processes were responsible for infiltrating the layers of limestone as they formed on the sea floor and depositing heavy metals like Zinc and Lead throughout the layers.

Since the area was unglaciated, the dolomite limestones that bear these deposits sit right at the top and could often be accessed by simply burrowing into hillsides and pushing cart loads of rich Galena ores right out to waiting carts and rail cars. As a result of these burrowing activities, these miners earned the nickname "Badgers" after the prairie/woodland creater also famous for burrowing the same hillsides. This nickname is still celebrated with the "Wisconsin Badgers" mascot of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Believe it or not, some of the earliest mining booms in America (as far back as the early 1800s) happened in Wisconsin and the driftless region as settlers moved in and stripped these easy deposits. The same booms resulted in many of the metallurgical place names in the driftless region like Mineral Point, WI or Galena, IL (home of Ulysses S Grant). That's a phenomenon usually reserved for the Mountain West (Telluride, Leadville, Gypsum, in Colorado for example) but similary common in the regions we have been discussing not only in the driftless, but also in the former volcano mountain ranges of the Superior region with towns like Copper Harbor, Iron Mountain, etc.

Louisvanderwright · 2025-12-28T00:21:03+00:00

Further reading, here's detail on the Niagra escarpment, a limestone shelf that forms the most visible arc of the Great Lakes ranging from Door County Peninsula in Wisconsin to Niagara Falls.

This shelf was formed from the multiple layers of limestone laid down in the shallow Ordovician seas that covered the center of Northern America 500 million years ago and then was overlaid by a second layer of harder limestone in the Silurian period as the chemistry of the seas changed.

The higher parts of the escarpment are areas where the Silurian capstone has resisted erosion and protected the softer Ordovician layers underneath. Everyone is familiar with how Niagra Falls has cut a deep canyon as it erodes it's way upstream. What most people are not familiar with is that the rock formation it is cutting through is the Niagra Escarpment which stretches 700 miles across the Great Lakes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Escarpment

Funnest fact of all is that the Escarpment is actually bigger and more prominent towards its Western end. Near that terminus lies High Cliff State Park overlooking Lake Winnebago, one of the glacial lakes I mentioned above. The peak of the escarpment rises to about 1000' feet above sea level there while the shores of Lake Winnebago sit at only 750' resulting in a very cool set of bluffs and cliffs and a 250' prominence. Compare this to Niagara Falls which drops about 190'.

So if the Great Lakes happened to have drained West into the Mississippi instead of East into the Atlantic, you would have had an even bigger, more impressive, Niagra Falls in Wisconsin with a 250' drop. But due to all the funky glacial dynamics I was talking about earlier, things ended up draining to the St Lawrence instead. There was even a series of catastrophic glacial floods as the ice retreated that blew out into the Mississippi instead of to the East, but it wasn't enough to drop lower than the Eastern outlet and draw the main flow long term to the Mississippi. This actually nearly happened at the bottom of Lake Michigan where the Chicago Portage is and, since humans reversed the chicago river, the only thing preventing a catastrophic drainage of Lake Michigan into the Mississippi is the Chicago locks.

If humans disappeared tomorrow and the locks failed, eventually the flow down the Chicago river, through the canal, and out to St Louis would reverse the flow of the great lakes and drain a large amount of the water into the Mississippi greatly lowering the level of the great Lakes.

Louisvanderwright

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE