Deal Estate - July 2010

07/29/10

Hiding in Plain Sight, in Kenwood

List Price: $1.95 million
The Property: On a Kenwood block of very substantial historical homes is one relative youngster that, on the street side at least, tries to fade from view. Three decades ago, the architect James Nagle, designed the house...

Posted at 12:06 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/28/10

A Bridgeport Surprise: Buyers Fill Up Phase One

I was skeptical last March when a developer showed me around a rubble-strewn site on the north side of Bridgeport where he was planning to unveil a development of 29 new homes. The area around the site, sandwiched between the Stevenson Expressway and the South Branch of the Chicago River, is a somewhat isolated patch three blocks wide that is filled with small industrial buildings and modest, dowdy older houses...

Posted at 11:03 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

07/26/10

Gouletas Son Short-Sells Penthouse at the Sterling

List Price: $899,000
Sale Price: $885,000
The Property: In 2001, when Nicholas V. Gouletas was an executive with the family-owned firm that built the Sterling at 345 North LaSalle Drive, he posed for a publicity photo slicing into a five-foot-tall cake in the shape of the 50-story building. More recently, he did some cutting of a different kind, slashing the price on his 2,700-square-foot, 47th-floor condo...

Posted at 09:55 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (2)

07/22/10

Family-Friendly Renovation in Lake Bluff

List Price: $2.395 million
The Property: “I’ve become a lover of sunrises because of living here,” John McKinven says of the circa 1938 home where he and his wife, Lynn, and their children live, across the street from Lake Bluff’s sublime blufftop Sunrise Park.

Posted at 11:00 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/21/10

REO Investors Jump on the Speedwagon

How did the principals of Speedwagon Properties, a Northbrook real estate investment firm, come up with a corporate moniker that riffs on the name of a classic-rock act? In real estate parlance, foreclosed property that is in the hands of a bank is often called REO, for Real Estate [Department] Owned. So it was probably inevitable...

Posted at 12:31 PM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

07/19/10

What $1 Million Buys This Month

The Properties: What kind of house does $1 million buy in Chicago right now? A fixer-upper. At least, that’s what three homes in the city that have each sold for exactly $1 million since July 1st have in common: They all have rehab ahead or, in one case, demolition...

Posted at 11:50 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/15/10

The Queen of Old Irving Park

List Price: $1.049 million
The Property: She’s the queen of Old Irving Park, a Queen Anne–style house built in 1889 as a model home for what was to be an entire village of Queen Annes.

Posted at 02:12 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/14/10

Soap Opera Scribe Kay Alden Auctions Condo with Bold and Beautiful Views

The 25th-floor Streeterville home of Kay Alden, who last month collected her fifth daytime Emmy award—this time as co-head of the writing team on The Bold and The Beautiful—goes up for auction on July 27th...

Posted at 09:20 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/12/10

Dick Phelan Pulls Up Stakes in Chicago

List Price: $2.4 million
Sale Price: $2.275 million
The Property: The lawyer and politician Richard J. Phelan and his wife, Barbara, sold their 21st-floor condo at 840 North Lake Shore Drive on June 28th.

Posted at 09:31 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/08/10

From Farmhouse to Refurbished Mansion in Glencoe

List Price: $7.5 million
The Property: Poised atop the lakeside bluff in Glencoe, this 18-room mansion has lots of rich, carefully restored period detail mingled with well-handled modernizations. A disused dumbwaiter shaft, for example, now holds the thicket of cables...

Posted at 11:17 AM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/07/10

An Uptown Gem, Restored and For Rent

Ninety years after it opened as one Chicago’s most lavish apartment hotels, the Sheridan Plaza, at Sheridan Road and Wilson Avenue, is getting back its Jazz Age luster...

Posted at 09:33 AM in Housing Bulletin | Permalink | Comments (2)

07/06/10

Mrs. McCormick’s Lake Forest Teahouse

List Price: $1.5 million
Sale Price: $1.05 million
The Property: Nestled into the trees at the edge of a ravine in east Lake Forest, this tile-roofed teahouse is a remnant of Walden, the 80-acre lakefront estate of Cyrus H. McCormick II. Built in the 1920s, it was converted to a house in the 1950s...

Posted at 10:09 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink | Comments (0)

07/01/10

A Stone Manor in Lake Forest

List Price: $3.25 million
The Property: Bret and Ursula Boyd drew on their European travels and Ursula’s Slovenian heritage when they built this 19-room house for themselves in Lake Forest in 2003...

Posted at 01:24 PM in On the Market | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 2010