IX
NEGROES AND RISING RENTS
One of the best known club women in Chicago sold an apartment house on Wabash avenue last month. It cost her $26,000. She sold it for $14,000. Her agent advised her to make the sale because, as he said, the colored people were coming into the neighborhood and the property surely was going to take a slump.
That is Chapter I of the little story. Chapter II opens with the rent of each apartment taking a jump from $35 to $50 in this identical apartment house that had apparently taken such a drop in value in the open market. The fact is that it wasn't an open market. It was a panicky market. Sold openly, so that all prospective buyers might have had opportunity to bid, the place would have brought a higher price than was originally paid for it.
In two other instances in this same neighborhood properties at one time worth $15,000 dropped to $8,000 and $6,000, respectively, in a market so managed that there was no competitive bidding. The sellers were filled with panic. Then the rents took a high jump after the sales were made.
There seem to be certain preposterous axioms of real estate exchange governing this district and no others in Chicago. These axioms might be stated thus: (1) Sell at a loss and the rent goes higher, and (2) the larger
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