Why One Chicago's Top Floors Sold So Differently This Year

"Two years ago I thought I was going to die with these condos," JDL Development head Jim Letchinger told The Real Deal in September. "When the spigot turned on, we sold 16 condos in three months."

He said that days after the 70th floor of his tower at Chicago Avenue and State Street closed for $8 million on September 8. It was the most expensive home sale in the city this year. The 69th floor directly below had closed for $7.9 million in mid-August, so One Chicago held the top two residential sales in Chicago for 2026.

Two months earlier, the same tower had been the cautionary example. In July, Crain's Chicago Business reported that a One Chicago full-floor unit, once under contract at $13.9 million, had sold for $5.3 million. Crain's called it the latest evidence that Chicago's downtown condo market "has had its wings clipped."

Both reports are accurate, and both describe full floors at the top of the same building, sold in the same year. In 2026, buyers at the top of One Chicago paid for certainty: how soon a floor could be lived in, and whether the deal behind it had a clean history.

A Contract From 2023 That Never Closed

For anyone using this tower's sales as comps, the friction starts with a deal that only looks like a sale. In January 2023, The Real Deal reported that the 73rd-floor residence, about 6,085 square feet, had found a buyer quickly at an asking price of $13.95 million.

That contract never closed. By January 2026, the listing had been taken down more than a year after the contract was signed, and county records showed no recorded sale.

The full floor Crain's described in July was one that had gone under contract at $13.9 million and later sold for $5.3 million. Crain's did not name the floor. The 73rd floor's history fits the description, but the reporting does not link the two. If they are the same unit, a finished floor near the top of the tower changed hands for about $871 a square foot, measured against an earlier price that never became a deed. Either way, the 73rd floor's $13.95 million figure appeared in press coverage and listing records for years. As a comp, it has no value at all.

Six Floors, One Footprint

The upper floors of One Chicago are close to a controlled experiment. Several are full floors of roughly 6,100 square feet, so neither size nor layout accounts for the price differences.

Read top to bottom, the table shows no clean relationship between floor number and price. The 72nd floor sold for more than the 69th and 70th, and a full floor reported only by its contract history sold for less than any of them. The floors that sold best in 2026 came from the developer, freshly built out, with a short delivery date.

What JDL Learned From Raw Space

When One Chicago was completed in 2022, its 77 residences started on the 44th floor, above 735 apartments and a retail base that includes a Whole Foods and a Life Time fitness club. JDL's first plan for the highest floors was to sell them as raw space. Letchinger told The Real Deal that the firm assumed ultra-wealthy buyers would want to bring their own contractors and design something custom.

The units sat unsold. In May 2024 the 68th floor's ask was cut by $3 million, and the floor was later leased to tenants who already lived in the building. JDL sold the 72nd floor as raw space in early 2025 but finished it for the buyer. The interest that finished floor drew from people touring it is what led the firm to build out the rest.

"They don't want to deal with the contractor, they don't want to deal with building it. They're all dry-walled now, and delivery is much shorter. That's the other thing, people don't want to wait."

Jim Letchinger, to The Real Deal, January 2026

Finished floors came with several finish packages, each affecting the final price. The 69th floor had sat on the market for more than a year before going under contract in January 2026. About seven months later it closed for $7.9 million.

A raw full floor asks a buyer to take on months of construction, a contractor relationship, and costs that can't be fixed in advance. When JDL took that work on and shortened the wait, floors that had sat for more than a year went under contract and closed.

What a $5.3 Million Full Floor Says About Comps

The full floor in the July sale went for $2.7 million less than the 70th. If it is the 73rd, it was higher, already finished, and about the same size as the 70th.

The seller of the July unit and the timeline behind the sale haven't been made public, so any single explanation would be a guess. What the sales do show is that "finished" is a broad label. The 73rd floor was already finished when it went under contract in 2023. The 69th and 70th were built out by the developer in 2026, with several finish packages offered and JDL as the seller. A floor that once carried a widely reported contract at more than twice the eventual price also comes with a story every later buyer will ask about.

This pattern isn't limited to One Chicago. In October, Crain's reported a high-floor St. Regis condo that sold for $5.1 million in early October 2026. In 2018, a different buyer had it under contract at $10 million.

For a buyer weighing a top-floor unit in this tower, a price per square foot means little until four questions are answered:

1. Did the comparable deal record? A contract that fell through and a listing that was taken down produce a headline, not a sale.
2. Who was the seller? JDL selling a newly finished floor and an individual owner reselling are different negotiations.
3. When was the unit finished, and to whose specification? A 2026 buildout chosen from current packages and a finish from the 2023 era are priced differently.
4. How long until move-in? Letchinger's own account of the turnaround comes down to shorter delivery.

When the Developer Leaves the Table

The lower floors were never the problem. By January 2026, about 60 of One Chicago's 77 condos had sold since sales began in 2022. The average price was about $3 million, and most sales fell between $1 million and $4 million.

The top floors are now nearly gone as well. In September, Letchinger said the 71st floor was under contract and expected to close within about six weeks. "People want condos," he said. "We don't have any more product." His attention has moved to Foundry Park, the riverfront megaproject between Bucktown and Lincoln Park that replaced the earlier Lincoln Yards plan.

That changes who sits across the table from a future buyer. Up to now, the most motivated seller in the building was a developer with unsold floors and a reason to finish them, cut prices, or lease them. As that inventory runs out, resales will come from individual owners. Each one has their own purchase price, their own finish choices, and their own reasons for selling. Whatever the 2026 buildouts added to those floors now sits with their owners, and a future resale will carry finishes that are no longer new.

The citywide numbers offer context, not a direct comparison. According to Illinois REALTORS, Chicago closed 1,681 sales of all home types in September 2026, down 7.2% from a year earlier. Inventory fell 20.9% to 3,788 listings, and the median price rose 8.3% to $389,900. Those figures mix single-family homes and condos at every price, so they say nothing about a 6,100-square-foot full floor. They do describe a city where fewer homes are for sale. In that setting, a finished, recorded, move-in-ready unit has less competition.

If you're weighing a residence at One Chicago and want each comparable sale reviewed for its contract history, seller, and buildout before you make an offer, Mike Larson can walk you through the building's sales floor by floor. Schedule a confidential consultation.