West Loop

Randolph Street and Fulton Market make up the densest restaurant corridor in the city, and the neighborhood grew up around them. Old meatpacking and warehouse buildings became lofts, then offices, then new construction on every remaining lot. The Loop is a ten minute walk east and both Union and Ogilvie stations sit at the eastern edge.

The next chapter is 725 W Randolph: 45 stories, roughly 700 feet, about 968,000 square feet of office from Related Midwest, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. Sidley Austin will occupy half the office space, moving from 1 S Dearborn when its lease expires in 2030. Groundbreaking is expected in 2027. Notably, the project switched from a mixed-use residential and hotel plan to office only.

Here is what I would want you to see before buying. Rents on the Near West Side are flat: two-bedrooms at $3,950 unchanged over the year, three-bedrooms at $5,300 up 2%, one-bedrooms at $2,800 up 2%. After ten years of consistent increases, that is a change in direction, and the likeliest cause is the volume of new apartments delivered here since 2021.

Sale prices show the same pause. County records put two-to-four unit buildings across the Near West Side at about $681,000 in 2025, against $680,000 in 2022. Four years of essentially nothing, after a run from $399,000 in 2016 to $691,000 in 2021.

None of that makes the West Loop a bad neighborhood. It is one of the best places to live in Chicago and that is not in question. It makes it a hard place to buy well right now, because you are paying a price set during the run while collecting rents set by the pause.

If you want to own here, my honest advice is to be patient and specific rather than fast. The buildings that make sense are the ones where a seller has a reason to move, not the ones priced off 2021 comps.