List Price: $4.55 million Sale Price: $4.55 million
The Property: About 12 years ago, this ten-room condo comprised half the palatial spread bought by Oprah Winfrey, though, by most accounts, the TV star never moved in. Today, this 4,700-square-foot space on the seventh floor of 219 East Lake Shore Drive—one of only eight buildings along this exclusive avenue—has a pine kitchen, a mahogany library, and other features shaped by the interior designer Marvin Herman. “It probably needs to be freshened up a bit, but you can also move right in without doing anything,” says Katherine Chez, the Gold Coast real-estate agent who, with her then-husband, the investor Ron Chez, bought the property in the mid 1990s. They acquired a little more than half of the seventh floor from Oprah—or, more accurately, from her staff. They laid the place out as a two-bedroom condo with an exercise room, but it is essentially a three-bedroom unit.
The couple listed the condo for sale in 2003, first asking $4.75 million and then dropping the price to $4.4 million, Chez says. When it didn’t sell, they took the place off the market and rented it out. This spring, Chez says, a potential buyer called her colleague Jeri Dry looking for something spectacular. Dry knew the rental might be available for sale, since the Chezes are divorcing, and soon a deal was cut. The sale closed on May 31st.
Price Points: The sale price is the highest on record for a unit in the building, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois. That’s not bad for a place that, technically, wasn’t even on the market. A top-floor unit in the 12-story building listed at $3.8 million sat on the market 329 days before recently going under contract (for a sale price that has not yet been disclosed). In September 2006, a fifth-floor unit went for $3.175 million; that one had about 700 square feet less than this condo.
Buyer: Chez would not identify the buyer, whose name has not yet appeared in public records of the sale.
List Price: $1.095 million Sale Price: $1.06 million
The Property: One of seven charming brick-and-stone row houses on a busy block of Clark Street, this three-story, four-bedroom home dates to 1888—and is just 18 feet wide. The sellers, Andrew Wolfe and Yoon Hie Jung, gutted and completely rehabbed the interior after buying the place for $520,000 six years ago. They did preserve an original glass skylight above the stairs, the only source of natural light aside from front and rear windows, says their agent, Rubloff North Shore’s Deborah Dwyer. The couple also managed to cram in some modern conveniences, such as the kitchen’s two ovens, two sinks, and a warming drawer. They nodded to the home’s vintage with wide-plank quarter-sawn oak flooring—and subway tile in the kitchen.
The slender home “is like the amazing trick house that gets bigger and bigger when you get inside,” Dwyer says. “The rooms are all large, and the ceilings get higher as you go up to a higher floor.” Because of its thick construction and snug row-house confines, she says, “when you walk in off noisy Clark Street, suddenly you have peace and quiet.” There is no yard, but Lincoln Park is only a block east, and in the rear, the house has the only fenced parking space on this row. It’s a quintessentially urban location—perhaps too crowded for some people—but Dwyer says the buyers (whom she would not name) aren’t likely to be bothered: they’re from New York.
Price Point: Here is a house that demonstrates how essential right-pricing is these days. When the sellers got word last year that they would be transferring to another city, says Dwyer, they initially priced the house at $1.299 million. They dropped it to $1.199 million, but still nothing happened; they took it off the market in fall 2006. When they left town this past April, says Dwyer, they put it back on the market with an asking price of $1.095 million, and by the first weekend, there were six competing offers, with a final sale price of $1.060 million. The deal closed May 22nd.
Buyers: Not yet identified in public records Sales Agent: Deborah Dwyer, Rubloff North Shore, 773-350-5300
List price: $2.995 million Sale price: $2.95 million
The Property: This new 11-room house on a tree-lined street in Lake View is one of four homes built by the developer Patrick Landrosh within half a block of one another. At 37 feet, its lot is somewhat wider than the Chicago norm of 25 feet, making for more spacious rooms indoors. With roughly 6,200 square feet of living space, the house has five bedrooms, four-plus baths (including a spa-like master bath), and a media room and a wet bar in the basement. There is a full-scale mudroom (not a hallway that doubles as one) fitted out with cubbies, and a detached, heated three-car garage with a rooftop deck. Southport Avenue’s restaurants, theatres, and shops are a block to the east, and Wrigley Field is only six blocks farther.
Price Point: This spring, after the nearly identical house next door (also by Landrosh) had been on the market for about a year, Landrosh’s sales agent, Ron Meadows, got offers from two different buyers over one April weekend. This place was not yet on the market, but that didn’t deter Meadows. “We said, ‘Let’s offer one of them the house next door [this property],’” he says. Both houses sold for the same price—$2.95 million—although this one was the first to close, on May 16th. The price is in the upper tier, but not out of the ordinary, for this part of Lake View (where another house a few blocks away went for $3.1 million a year ago). Meadows say that the land alone for this house—and the place next door—cost Landrosh $1 million per lot. “That’s a premium neighborhood,” he says. Meadows himself is building a house a few blocks away that he plans to price at $3.3 million.
Buyers: Not yet identified in public records
Sales agent: Ron Meadows, Sudler Sotheby’s International, (773) 244-9900
The Property: Situated on a secluded country lane in Barrington Hills, this 11-room house, built in 1990, has four bedrooms, an in-ground pool and hot tub, and a modern metal barn, as well as access to the local network of horse trails. The previous residents lost the home in a bank foreclosure, and the bank, eager to get the property off its books, listed it for sale in late March “as is” with the Baird & Warner agent Linda Rengel. The house was showing wear, she acknowledges: the entire interior needed paint, new carpet, and bathroom upgrades; the landscaping was an overgrown mess; and the garage stunk from its former use as a dog kennel (“That has to be fumigated,” Rengel says). On top of all those issues, there was no way to warrant the pool’s condition; it had been drained and covered for the winter, and potential buyers couldn’t be told with certainty that it had no leaks or other damage.
But the property has advantages, too. Because it’s only 17 years old, the house has the room sizes and impressive, semi-traditional exterior that appeals now, Rengel says. “In Barrington Hills, you find a lot of dated houses in styles people don’t like. They’re on gorgeous pieces of land, but you have to build. This one looks more like what people want.”
Price Point: If thoroughly prepped for sale, Rengel estimates, the house would have been priced in the mid-$900,000s. Given the house’s condition, she priced it at $749,900. But within two days of listing it, Rengel was entertaining five competing offers, and bidding took the price up to $775,000—still a bargain considering that any repairs (which the buyer began promptly after the May 1st closing) “shouldn’t go past $125,000,” Rengel says. Even spending that much, the buyers will have acquired the wooded, five-acre property at a significant discount. “That’s not just the deal of the week,” she insists. “They got the deal of the year.”
Buyers: Not yet identified in public records Sales Agent: Linda Rengel, Baird & Warner
The Property: This 13-room mansion in a French Normandy style overlooks the fifth fairway of the Indian Hill Club golf course just outside Winnetka. Sequestered behind brick gates and surrounded by formal landscaping, the house has seven bedrooms, five fireplaces, a library, and a chauffeur’s apartment and other servant rooms that Jean Wright (the seller’s agent) says the new owners will convert to family space. There is a pool and cabana on the nearly two–acre lot.
Built in 1925, the house had belonged to two generations of descendants of Charles B. Schaffer, a Chicago oilman and racehorse owner. It has stood mostly unused for about the past decade, as the second generation—Nancy Neumann Brooker, and her husband, T. Kimball Brooker—decided what to do with it. “They used it as a second home, but only sometimes,” says Wright. “They were having work done on it.” Following his wife’s death in 2003, Kimball Brooker decided to sell. The kitchen and baths, Wright says, “are original—and I mean original.” Renovating them will be pricey: there are five full baths and three partials. Price Points: Brooker listed the home with Wright in July and got only low-ball offers. “But right after we signed the contract [in early April, for $4.45 million], we had an offer for $5 million, and suddenly two other people were very interested. It’s interesting that it sat there all that time and then suddenly, all this activity.”
The Property: This classic red-brick colonial with three bedrooms, two-plus bathrooms, and two fireplaces provided a rare opportunity to get an appealing, nicely updated home in exclusive Kenilworth for under $1 million—and it has played that role twice in the past year. Built in 1929, the house sold for $5,000 less than the price it had brought just ten months before, in June 2006. And that was with a few significant upgrades since that earlier sale: repair to a basement leak and new landscaping. “My sellers made some very nice improvements,” says their agent, Julie Miller of the Hudson Company, but she declined to explain why they resold so soon. “I would have loved to see them get more, but given that they wanted to sell in a relatively short period of time, we’re fine.”
In June 2006—after it had been put on the market with a recently rehabbed kitchen, master bath, and second bath—the house sold for $10,000 more than its $935,000 asking price after just two months. Those buyers (the most recent sellers) then put the house back on the market in December, six months after closing on their purchase of it. With the upgrades, they initially priced it at $985,000. They later dropped their asking price to $975,000 before agreeing to sell for $940,000. That deal closed on April 19th.
Price Points: At either selling price—this April’s or last June’s—the house was a good buy. It stands on a block of pretty homes within walking distance of a Metra station, and any children who might live here would go to two premier schools: Joseph Sears Elementary and New Trier Township High. And it is relatively affordable in these upper-end environs: of 24 sales in Kenilworth in the past 12 months, only seven have gone for under $1 million, according to data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois. “That house is in the hot price range,” Miller says. “It’s very hard to get into the New Trier district in a nice house in good condition for under a million dollars, sad to say.”
The Property: On April 11th—the day before this five-room house sold for $220,000—the National Association of Realtors (NAR) forecast that the national median price for an existing home in 2007 will be $220,300. If that prediction holds up, it means that half the houses sold this year will go for less than this Lindenhurst property, while half will sell for more. (The NAR forecast anticipates a slight drop in home values nationwide, the first in almost four decades.) Although this five-bedroom, one-bath house is small—920 square feet and a one-car garage—it does have a view out back of a small lake; a playground, a tennis court, and a trail-crossed forest preserve are only a short walk away. Throw in a big, fenced-in back yard, a low-maintenance all-brick exterior, and a stylish kitchen (maple cabinets and stainless-steel appliances), and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice midpoint.
Price Points: The sellers bought this 39-year-old house in 2004 and undertook an ambitious upgrade that included a new roof and a kitchen rehab. When they were transferred out of town, they listed the house (on January 1st) for $234,900, but got no action. “A few years ago, it would have gone in the $230,000s with all those improvements,” says Tina Henry, their agent. Confronted by a softening market, they cut the price to $224,900 and landed a buyer.
Buyer: Not yet identified in public records
Sales agent: Tina Henry, Century 21 Kreuser & Seiler
The Property: This newly built 11-room, five-bedroom house set the sales record for Oak Lawn when it was sold on April 6th. It is on the same street as—and within two blocks of—this southwest suburb’s two previous top sales. The developer Timothy Desmond of Leeside Builders built all three of those high-priced houses, which each replaced smaller homes more representative of Oak Lawn’s modest housing stock. Kathy Walker, Desmond’s real-estate agent, points to some of the appealing amenities that the developer includes in his homes: wrought-iron stair rails, Bosch appliances, and jack-and-jill baths (a bathroom shared by two bedrooms). But the real key to Desmond’s success, says Walker, are the large lots. Whereas most Oak Lawn lots are 50 feet wide, Desmond has succeeded in “finding these wide lots—60 feet wide—where you can put a three-car garage,” says Walker. “A three-car garage is hard to come by in Oak Lawn.”
Price Points: While most houses in Oak Lawn sell for between $220,000 and $320,000, the suburb has had a spate of new-home sales whose price tags topped $500,000 (there have been 32 of them since the first sold in August 2005, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois). They are sprinkled throughout the town, but the biggest concentration is west of Central Avenue. Walker believes many of the town’s higher-priced homes have drawn value-hunters from outside the immediate area—which is no surprise. With access to highway and train transportation, a fine library, and lots of shopping along revitalized 95th Street, this little suburb tucked a short distance southwest of Midway Airport is a good place to look for housing bargains.
Buyer: Though the buyer of this house has not yet been identified in public records, Walker says Oak Lawn’s three top-priced houses went to people from Chicago’s North Side, Naperville, and another suburb. “In any of those places, these houses would have cost $750,000—at least,” she figures.
Neighborhood: Gold Coast, Chicago List price: $12 million Sale price: $11 million
The Property: This imposing stone mansion—23 rooms in all—is a relic of Lake Shore Drive’s early days as an avenue dotted with opulent single-family homes. Built in 1890 in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the house declined in the 20th century. When he bought it in 1989, says the entrepreneur Art Frigo, the place was “a mess and completely closed off, except for one large room.” Frigo also bought the similarly rundown mansion next door, paying $3.75 million for both places. He restored both, installing two lavish condos in each of the houses; when those failed to sell, he ended up living in one and renting the other three. Eventually he sold both condos in the neighboring house to a family who knitted them back together into one home. Now this house has sold as a single residence, too. “The market caught up to the house,” says Patty Navilio, Frigo’s real estate agent then and now. “Back when Art bought it, nobody wanted to live in 15,000 square feet, but now we’re in the era of the mega-house.”
The Seller: Frigo, whose entrepreneurial interests are numerous, says he now spends more time in Florida than Chicago. “I had to let go of the house,” he says, “but I didn’t want to.” After trying a few years ago to sell both units in this house as a package, Frigo decided to convert the mansion back into a single home. Once the work was completed, the house sold in five days in late March.
Buyer: Not identified in public records.
Sales agents: Patty Navilio and Mary Bennett, Koenig & Strey GMAC
Neighborhood: Lake View, Chicago List price: $1.399 million Sale price: $1.312 million
The Property: Built in 2004 by Pat Heneghan, this nine-room wood-frame home has four bedrooms, three-plus baths, three fireplaces, two wet bars, and a deck atop the two-car garage. The homey front porch belies the elegance of the interior, which has numerous windows and skylights. The living room and dining room evince a quiet grandeur with columns, a carved mantel, and diagonal-laid cherry floors. Radiant heat in the floors adds to the comfortable warmth of the place.
Seller: Not identified in the public records, the sellers had lived here just long enough to finish a tasteful decorating job that included adding hand-woven silk shades. They moved to begin a new job out of state.
The Pros: The house is on a relatively quiet residential street, but only a block from Belmont Avenue and a lively strip of restaurants and other attractions—a very desirable setting for most city dwellers. But there are exceptions: one couple that wrote an offer on the house eventually withdrew it after they decided the neighborhood was “too urban,” says the sellers’ sales agent. “And they were coming from New York City.”
Buyer: Not identified in public records
Sales agent: Jennifer Ames of Coldwell Banker Residential.
The Property: About 12 years ago, this ten-room condo comprised half the palatial spread bought by Oprah Winfrey, though, by most accounts, the TV star never moved in. Today, this 4,700-square-foot space on the seventh floor of 219 East Lake Shore Drive—one of only eight buildings along this exclusive avenue—has a pine kitchen, a mahogany library, and other features shaped by the interior designer Marvin Herman. “It probably needs to be freshened up a bit, but you can also move right in without doing anything,” says Katherine Chez, the Gold Coast real-estate agent who, with her then-husband, the investor Ron Chez, bought the property in the mid 1990s. They acquired a little more than half of the seventh floor from Oprah—or, more accurately, from her staff. They laid the place out as a two-bedroom condo with an exercise room, but it is essentially a three-bedroom unit.
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