List Price: $1.599 million
Sale Price: $1.599 million
The Property: When it hit the market in June, this home in the Southport Corridor was sure to get noticed, with its façade of many materials, its six outdoor terraces, and its style-setting interior finishes. But until the sellers cut their price a fourth time, they weren’t in the sweet spot where the place would sell.
Initially, the house was listed at $1.83 million; a series of price cuts followed. On September 25, the sellers lopped off another $50,000 for an asking price of $1.599 million. That’s when the bidders came out, according to Melanie Giglio, the Sergio & Banks agent who represented the home for the sellers. “We had a very high level of interest,” she says, though she would not reveal exactly how many bids were placed on the house. The home went under contract 12 days later, and the sale closed November 17 to buyers who are not yet identified in public records.
Even with a bidding war, the sellers, Chirico Jordan and Kyla Douglas, suffered a financial hit. According to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, they had paid $1.765 million in March 2010 for the then-new house—which means they took a 6 percent loss (not including commissions and taxes paid on the transaction). Giglio says that one of the sellers had taken an out-of-town promotion “that they couldn’t pass up, but they were really, really sorry to have to leave this house.”
That’s no surprise; the home is very appealing inside, as illustrated by this video that Sergio & Banks sponsored on YoChicago when the home went on the market. The main floor has an open pair of living and dining areas, with a media room and very modish kitchen behind. Upstairs is a master suite with 16-foot ceilings and a fireplace in the bedroom; the master bath has etched-glass shower walls and an extra-long soaking tub that converts to a massage table. There’s a vast two-level rooftop deck and, in the basement, a bar that looks like the kind of hip new spot that Amalie Drury, the columnist behind Chicago’s The Chaser, might drop in on.
Price Points: The recent sellers are the third in a row to collect less than they hoped on this property. In 2006, a limited liability company (LLC) paid $620,000 for the site, which at the time held an older multi-flat building. Less than a year later, as the real-estate market was tanking, the LLC put the site up for sale at $599,900. A second LLC finally bought it in June 2008, for $550,000, an 11 percent loss for the first LLC. The second LLC listed the under-construction home in September 2009, asking $2.095 million. That LLC’s March 2010 sale (to the people who would become the sellers in today’s transaction) was for 84 percent of the peak asking price.
Listing Agent: Melanie Giglio of Sergio & Banks; 773-235-6100 or melanie@sergioandbanks.com