In the wake of the bust that followed the glory days of the condo boom, a number of projects ground to a halt. One of the most striking is this unfinished structure at 2609 West Belmont Avenue, where gaping windows, rusting steel, and scattered construction materials give the impression of a six-story-tall ghost town.
List Price: $5.7 million
Sale Price: $4 million
The Property: This contemporary home, designed to accommodate an art collection, was on the market for more than three years before finally selling on February 12th. The new owners, it turns out, are also art collectors and had been looking for a showcase for their own growing collection. What’s more, the new…
List Price: $2.495 million
The Property: Just about all that remains of this 115-year-old graystone is its rusticated stone façade. From there back—and from there up—the developer Jody Libman and his company, Trianon, have crafted an entirely new, though historically sensitive home. “You can’t build something that looks like this anymore,” Libman says. “Look how it
The former Chicago Bears wide receiver Tom Waddle, now a sports anchor at Fox Chicago, ESPN 1000, and other media, bought a new 12-room house in an estate section of Lake Forest on February 12th. The $3.25 million that Waddle and his wife, Cara, paid was just 48 percent of the $6.7 million that the home’s builder, Lynch Construction, initially asked for the place in October 2008.
List Price: $949,000
Sale Price: $857,500
The Property: The Park Ridge family who bought this new house that had stood unsold for nearly three years got the place for about half of what the builder had originally wanted. “There’s a lot that the builder put in that I don’t think he would have done if he’d known he would sell in the…
List Price: $749,000
The Property: This charming stucco Prairie-style house, built in 1906 in what is now Oak Park’s Ridgeland Historic District, has four bedrooms, many vintage details, and a rentable coach house, the income from which could defray the new owners’ mortgage expenses.
This week, hoping to stimulate construction of new high-end homes, Orren Pickell Designers & Builders lopped 25 percent off the prices of its vacant lots in Lake Bluff, Bannockburn, Long Grove, and Highland Park. Also included in the markdown is the colossal 99-year-old Landsowne mansion in Lake Bluff.
List Price: N/A Sale Price: $1 million
The Property: In December, Lester Crown, the 84-year-old patriarch of one of Chicago’s wealthiest families, sold his interest in a secluded Winnetka mansion to his son, Steven.
List Price: $1.695 million
The Property: Back in 1984, when Pete and Barbara Rosi went looking for a tranquil country residence in Kane County, they fell in love with a hillside home outside St. Charles that had been built in 1932 as a getaway for a Chicago family. Situated 58 feet above its own private lake, and with tall oaks hanging overhead, the house was their ideal.
“Realtors cannot change economic reality,” insisted Genie Birch, a Koenig & Strey GMAC agent and the president of the Chicago Association of Realtors (CAR). Birch’s remarks opened CAR’s economic forecast panel for 2010, which met on January 28th at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza. Here are ten other things that Chicago real-estate agents heard from the panel:
