Oct 13, 2008

Sale of the Week

Sale of the Week: A Teardown—or Not—in Barrington Hills

List Price: $1.9 million
Sale Price: $1.4 million
The Property: This 50-year-old Greek Revival-style home may be demolished soon by its new owners—but then again, it may not. After all, it sat for two and a half years awaiting a similar fate from its last owners and most recent sellers—Sri Dasari and Lakshmi Akula—who bought the house in January 2006 with their eyes only on its 7.5-acre lot atop a ridge overlooking the second-biggest lake in Barrington Hills.

“They didn’t get around to tearing it down,” says the sellers’ agent, Linda Lohr of ERA Countrywood—nor, she says, did they live in the house while they owned it. Dasari is the chairman and CEO and Akula is the executive vice president of Brigade, a Mount Prospect–based company that handles outsourcing to India for U.S. companies. The ten-year-old company first signed Dasari as its head of offshore operations six years ago; he later moved to the top job at Brigade. The couple did not respond to a call for comment on the sale.

The 11-room red brick house has two side wings that embrace tree-filled views of Hawthorne Lake. The house had stood vacant (or had been occupied only by a caretaker) for a while before Dasari and Akula bought it, Lohr says. In her listing sheet, she stipulated that the house was to be sold “as is,” the expectation being that a buyer would want to build a new, larger home on this 7.5-acre parcel (the standard lot in Barrington Hills is five acres). “This is a rather unique find, with the lake and being on this ridge,” Lohr says.

The buyers, not yet identified in pubic records, intend to tear the house down “as quickly as possible, but they won’t build for a few years,” Lohr says.

Price Points: Dasari and Akula bought the property in January 2006 for $1.4 million, according to Cook County property records. Last June, they listed it for sale with an asking price of $1.9 million—or a full half-million more than they had paid for it at the peak of the real-estate market. The deal closed in September for $1,412,500, which is only a $12,500 increase after two and a half years of ownership—still, not bad for a very depressed market. How did they manage to do so well on a property that sat substantially unchanged in a rapidly declining real-estate market? “They had one darned good Realtor representing them,” Lohr jokes. On top of that, it’s a plum piece of land, and land often holds its value.   

Listing Agent: Linda Lohr, ERA Countrywood, 847-381-8070; Linda@lindalohr.com

Posted at 08:13 AM in Sale of the Week | Permalink

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