List Price: $2.5 million
Sale Price: $2.4 million
The Property: Nick Calamos, president of investments at Calamos Investment Management, a Naperville firm with $29.9 billion in assets under its control, last week sold a 21-room pondside home in St. Charles. With his wife, Kimberly, Calamos, a nephew of the Naperville-based firm’s founder, John P. Calamos Sr., had paid $2.856 million for the property five years earlier.

That amounts to a 15.9-percent loss, not counting any amount the couple may have spent on improvements while living in the 13,000-square-foot house.

Set on an acre-and-a-half in an area known as the Sanctuary of Fox Glen, the three-story house has elaborate woodwork, including beamed ceilings in the library, dining room, and kitchen; a sweeping bridal staircase from the large foyer to an overlook hallway above the living room; an elevator; and in the basement, a bar, a movie theatre, an exercise studio, and a racquetball court. Tall Palladian windows in the living room look out over the swimming pool toward the natural pond. There are six bedrooms, seven-plus baths, and a large rear deck.

Identified by Kane County tax records as the seller, Nick Calamos declined to comment for this article. Jay Rodgers, the agent on the July 27th sale, says his clients bought the house for temporary use while building the home where they now live.

Price Points: I included this house in Chicago’s October 2003 issue, as the highest-priced sale in Kane County for the 12 months that ended June 30, 2003. It had sold for $2.65 million. Only two years later, it sold for seven percent more, when the Calamoses paid $2.856 million. Its 15 percent drop from there in the recent sale is commensurate with the latest Case-Shiller index figures, which indicated that in May, Chicago-area home prices were at mid-2002 levels.

Listing Agent: Jay Rodgers of Re/Max Professionals East, 630-377-1400; jay@rodgersgroup.com