On the Market: Kid Stuff—Lincoln Park

List Price: $2.595 million
The Property: This elegant 12-year-old home in Lincoln Park can also handle a crew of rambunctious kids. Just ask the sellers, Dick and Annie Rothkopf, who raised three kids there and are now downsizing. In fact, it was a teenager who found them the…

Sale of the Week: Half-Price Sale in Northbrook

List Price: $837,000
Sale Price: $805,000
The Property: The buyers of this big house on more than half an acre in Northbrook spent 49 percent of what its prior owners had paid for the place in 2007. Built in 2000 in a neighborhood where builders were replacing many small, older homes with far bigger residences, this house has eight rooms, each one oversized. Its white brick exterior carries through…

On the Market: A Mediterranean Villa in Highland Park

List Price: $949,000
The Property: Lake Michigan may not resemble the Mediterranean Sea, but here and there along its shores, Chicagoans have built some Mediterranean-style homes—including charmers like this one, with its abundant gardens and its two-story tower reaching for the sun. Creamy orange-sherbet stucco, a clay tile roof, and round-edged window insets give the house the ambience of a miniature resort—and that’s what it might once have been…

On the Market: Monty’s Jungle Lair—in West Chicago

List Price: $699,900
The Property: Like a camouflaged animal that hides in plain sight, this wild and irreverent West Chicago residence appears from the street to be nothing more than a big ranch house on a huge lot. But hiding inside that conservative shell is one of the zaniest homes I have ever visited…

Housing Bulletin: The Human Factor

Prospective buyers who tour a house listed for sale at $899,900 in Naperville’s Ashwood Park subdivision may think the sellers have just stepped out for a moment. After all, there is food in the refrigerator, dishes in the cabinets, and clothes in the closets. The place looks lived in—albeit very neatly lived in…

Sale of the Week: Selling Off the Rite Stuff —Near North Side

List Price: $3.47 million
Sale Price: $3.128 million
The Property: Built of Lake Superior sandstone, this residence is one of three 19th-century mansions adjoining the Scottish Rite Cathedral on the 900 block of North Dearborn. In 2006, the Rite, a Masonic group, sold the cathedral, the three mansions, and a parking lot to developers for about $60 million…