Sale of the Week

Sale of the Week – East Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

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.

Listing Agent: Jeri Dry, Coldwell Banker, (312) 440-7567

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