GOLD COAST
LIST $4.25 MILLION SALE $3.75 MILLION

This Gold Coast home with a distinctive triangular window bay and a chalet roof was sold midrenovation. “What [the sellers] had done, they did painstakingly—to the nines,” says Tim Salm, the Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent who handled the sale. That included gutting the main structure and rebuilding all the way from the studs. The sellers had also installed an elevator and expanded the coach house into a family room and an attached three-car garage. Left undone was the installation of flooring, moldings, and other carpentry. The kitchen also needs to be finished; its cabinetry was in boxes on the site, but no appliances were included in the sale, Salm says.

The Cook County Recorder of Deeds identifies the sellers as Gregory Crecos and Diana Barr. Crecos, the managing partner of the headhunting firm Gregory Michaels & Associates, did not respond to a request for comment, and I could not reach Barr. According to the recorder, the couple paid $2.725 million for the house in 2004. “They held on to it for a little bit and then spent two years renovating,” Salm says. (He would not disclose how much they spent on renovations.) “I think that house [when finished] would trade in the $5.5 million range.” The buyers, who closed on the sale in mid-January, are not yet identified in public records.

Photograph: Todd Urban