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Assemblages are growing in popularity due to the lack of land for new development. The key is to find a set of adjacent properties that all have high development multiples. Then negotiate these properties with their respective owners. It is preferable to find assemblage opportunities with the same owner. 

Depending on the density level of the neighborhood, your search will look different. Your search will also look different depending on what you are looking to build. This week, we dove deep into three Chicago neighborhoods to find assemblage opportunities for multifamily development.

Ukraine Village

East Village

West Town

How to search for assemblage opportunities in Chicago? 

Using the deepblocks software, we first scoped out the general density of the area and noticed that most of the properties can yield between five and twenty units each. Most of them are under ten units. This meant low density, but not as low as residential. 

The opportunity in low-density residential is to combine three to five sites and build between 20 and 50 units. The search criteria were as follows:

  • Properties that allow for ten units or more. 

  • And have less than 3,000 SF of the existing building area. 

Assuming an average of 1,000 SF per unit, this can mean at least a 3X development multiple in each. 

The search result was as follows:

  • Total properties canvassed: 7,672

  • Properties that allow for at least 10 units: 680

  • Properties that also have less than 3,000 SF: 44

  • Adjacent property groups: 6 assemblages opportunities. 

Chicago has 604,319 properties. If the ratio of assemblages is consistent, there could be more than 472 assemblage opportunities in Chicago. 

More will be revealed,

Olivia

If you’d like to hear more about assemblage opportunities, follow Deepblocks on LinkedIn to stay updated whenever we release a new article.

Olivia Ramos is the CEO of Deepblocks, an AI-powered software that automates the site selection process for developers and investors. 

See how quickly you can find your next development site here (our record is 3 minutes).