Antonio Davis played for the Chicago Bulls for two seasons before the team traded him to the New York Knicks in 2005. But the onetime power forward, now retired and living in Atlanta, still has a nearly $6-million foothold here: two suburban homes that he is trying to sell. "Both of them are great family houses," Davis says, "but with the economy being the way it is, at this point we’re just being patient."

In 2004, Davis and his wife, Kendra, bought the first of those homes—a 13-room house on a busy Naperville street—for $1.8 million. "All the high-school kids knew I lived there, so they’d yell my name when they drove by," Davis says. Two and a half years later, when he was playing for the Knicks, Davis and his family paid $3.125 million for another 13-room house, this time in a quiet, gated Burr Ridge subdivision called Falling Water. Davis expected the place, which had a pool and waterfall out back, would be his "retirement home."

That’s when another Chicago winter reared its head. "One day," Davis recalls, "I was shoveling snow and I thought, ‘This is not retirement!’" He and his family moved to Atlanta in summer 2007, leaving the Naperville house listed for sale with Lois Munn of Coldwell Banker and the Burr Ridge house listed with Beth Burtt of Brush Hill Realtors.

Photograph: chrisguillen.com