Sale of the Week
As Rosie O’Donnell Moves In, Another Passenger Hops on Oprah’s Brain-Drain Train
List Price: $2.5 million
Sale Price: not yet reported
The Property: The five-bedroom 6,000-square-foot home of Erik Logan, president of the Oprah Winfrey Network, went under contract last week, making him the latest member of Winfrey’s former Chicago team to pull up stakes for California. Just last month, Winfrey’s creative chief, Lisa Erspamer, sold her condo on the Gold Coast.
Late last week, the Chicago Tribune reported that the buyer is Rosie O’Donnell, whose OWN-produced talk show is taking over the Near West Side studio Oprah used to use.
Logan, who shortened his name from Erik Logan Toppenberg early in his radio career, paid $2.4 million for the house with wife, Erin Toppenberg, in September 2008, two months after he left a top programming post at XM Satellite Radio to become executive vice president of Harpo Productions. The next year, Winfrey tapped him to be one of the two presidents of the company.
Built in 2005 on an extra-wide lot—37.5 feet, compared to the norm of 25—the home has six bathrooms, 11-foot ceilings, a big sheltered deck on top of the garage, and, according to the listing sheet, a “sports bar that will amaze you.” The home is just over a block from the highly regarded Blaine School and the Southport Corridor’s shopping and dining—but, as WBEZ’s Justin Kaufmann points out, Lake View seems like an unlikely spot for O’Donnell.
Another key member of Winfrey’s Chicago team now working in Los Angeles, Sheri Salata, Logan’s co-president, has not yet put her Lake View home on the market. According to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, she paid $840,000 for the 12th-floor condo in 2006.
Price Points: The Tribune reported that O’Donnell bought the house furnished, and that the final sale price will be close to the listing price. That would mean the sellers are gaining $100,000 on their 2008 home purchase; but because I don’t know how much the furnishings are worth, it’s not clear if in the end they will clear any profit.
Listing Agent: Janelle Gordon of Koenig & Strey Real Living; 312-944-8900
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The sale closed Sept. 26, at $2.25 million. That's 83% of what Logan originally wanted--and arguably not 'close' to the listing price, as the Tribune originally reported. Logan paid $2.4 million for the property in 2008, as I reported above; this sale price is only 93% of that, and that's not counting the fact that the sellers reportedly included the furnishings with the house (which suggests the sale of the house alone would represent an even bigger loss).
The original asking price was $2.7 million.
To clarify: the sale price is 83% of Logan's original asking price and 90 % of what he was asking at the time of the sale.