A California real estate investor has paid more than $67 million for a 196-unit apartment tower at 1250 N. LaSalle St., a former Chicago condominium building that was converted into rentals. The buyer, JRK Property Holdings, is extending a buying spree that added nearly 3,400 apartment units to its national portfolio in 2025.
The deal was reported by CoStar, which described the purchase as part of JRK's expanding footprint across the country. The building at 1250 N. LaSalle St. is in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood, according to Multifamily Leasing. That same listing notes the building was formerly a condo property before its conversion into renovated apartments with new finishes and fixtures.
JRK is a Los Angeles-based investment firm that manages roughly $9 billion in assets spread across 26 states, including about 30,000 multifamily units and 10 hotels, per the Los Angeles Times. The firm closed on nearly 3,400 apartment units across multiple transactions in 2025 alone, the paper reported, a pace that has carried into this year's acquisitions.
A Busy Stretch for JRK's National Portfolio
The LaSalle Street purchase follows other sizable moves by the firm. Earlier this year, JRK acquired a $400 million, three-property portfolio from Equity Residential comprising 803 apartments spread across Los Angeles, Seattle and Hoboken, New Jersey, the same report notes. In mid-December, the firm also picked up Edge 1909, a 364-unit Class A community in Pittsburgh's Strip District.
Those deals, combined with the Chicago purchase, suggest a firm willing to deploy capital across multiple metro markets rather than concentrating in a single region. The timing in Chicago is notable: the city's apartment investment market has been heating up considerably over the past year.
Chicago's Multifamily Market Is Surging
Chicago multifamily transaction count in the first half of 2026 hit its highest point in more than a decade, according to a Northmarq market report. Cap rates averaged 6.0% during that stretch, up 25 basis points from a year earlier, the report found. Chicago apartment sales overall jumped 91% in 2026 as rent growth boosted investor confidence, Crain's Chicago Business reported.
Rents have climbed accordingly. In downtown submarkets including the West Loop, South Loop, River North and Fulton Market, rents rose an average of 5.5% over the past year to more than $3,000 per month, per Northmarq's analysis. Lincoln Park posted the lowest vacancy rate among the submarkets tracked, at 3.1%, after dipping 30 basis points over the same period. Northmarq expects investor demand to keep concentrating in downtown neighborhoods, which already account for the greatest share of activity, and projects citywide vacancy could fall below 5.0% in 2027 as the development pipeline narrows.
Not Every Condo-to-Rental Deal Has Paid Off
Chicago has seen a wave of condo-deconversion projects over the past decade, where entire condo buildings are bought out and converted into rental apartments. Those deals have produced mixed results. In September 2024, ESG Kullen sold the 250-unit Oliver on LaSalle building at 1140 N. LaSalle Drive for $31.5 million — well below the $38 million ESG paid for it in December 2018 before spending an undisclosed sum on renovations, according to CoStar's earlier reporting. That sale was characterized as an example of a losing investment in the condo-deconversion trend.
Not every deal has gone sideways, though. A Brooklyn-based investor sold a 188-unit building on Chicago's North Side for $43 million in 2021 after spending roughly $32 million to acquire and upgrade it, per the same CoStar account. The Oliver on LaSalle's eventual buyer, local investor Andrzej Karwowski, financed his purchase with a loan of just over $24.3 million from JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Whether JRK's LaSalle Street bet mirrors the Oliver on LaSalle's struggles or the North Side building's rebound remains to be seen. What's clear is that the firm is betting on a Chicago rental market that, by multiple measures, is tightening fast.
