Commercial
RE/MAX Commercial Brokers $4.5M Sale of Norridge Mixed-Use Block
By Real Estate Wire Staff, . Real Estate Wire.
A mixed-use block in Norridge, Illinois sold for $4.5 million on October 21, according to REJournals, with 1st Liberty Management, Inc. of Prospect Heights acquiring the roughly 41,000-square-foot property at 7701–7757 W. Lawrence Ave. from a private owner.
The property
The site spans 1.94 acres and holds two two-story buildings, each with ground-floor retail and apartments on the upper floors, along with a separate one-story store building of roughly 15,000 square feet at the 7757 address. In total, the block carries eight storefronts and 16 residential units.
Jason Bitton of RE/MAX Commercial in Libertyville represented the seller. William L. Gold of Troy Realty Ltd. acted for the buyer.
What made this deal complicated
Bitton picked up the listing after an earlier marketing effort had stalled. Working through the rent roll one lease at a time, Bitton underwrote the asset from three angles: a value-add play, a stabilized income hold and a redevelopment opportunity, REJournals reported.
The added wrinkle was the seller's own business, which occupied the freestanding store building and was being sold simultaneously. As that parallel negotiation shifted, so did the buyer pool, moving between pure investors and owner-occupants depending on where the business sale stood at any given moment.
What it signals
The deal illustrates a dynamic that brokers handling owner-occupied commercial properties know well: the business sale and the real estate sale are two separate negotiations running on different timelines, and the buyer profile for one can look nothing like the buyer profile for the other. Underwriting the same asset three different ways, and keeping multiple buyer types engaged, is what kept this one moving.
For investors watching the Chicago suburban market, a mixed-use block with retail below and residential above offers some income diversification, though the value-add framing suggests the rent roll was not fully stabilized at closing. Whether 1st Liberty Management pursues lease-up, redevelopment or a long hold is not established by the reporting.
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