List Price:  $354,900
The Property: So you think it would be great to pick up a cleaned-up, lightly rehabbed foreclosure in pretty Edison Park at a deep discount?

You’re not alone. Since going on the market Friday, this honey in Edison Park has already attracted four offers. But further offers “still definitely have a chance,” says the listing agent, Saul Zenkevicius. As of Monday, the seller, the government-supported housing finance agency Freddie Mac, hadn’t yet set a deadline for highest and best offers. “There is time, you can still put in an offer,” he said.

Why should you rush to join a bidding war already in progress?

Well, to start with, it’s a fine-looking house in a fine-looking neighborhood, one of my favorites in the city.

On top of that, after taking the house back in foreclosure this summer, Freddie Mac had it cleaned up and “brought up to the level of the neighborhood’s standards,” Zenkevicius says, diplomatically. There are all new stainless steel kitchen appliances in a kitchen that was already looking good, the hardwood floors have been refinished and the interior has been repainted. Some minor plumbing, electrical, and roof repairs were made, too, according to Zenkevicius.

These are all things that a new buyer can rest easy about. But there’s no worry that bigger problems were papered over, the agent says: “There was no severe deferred maintenance found,” he says.

The house has two fireplaces—one in the living room and one in the basement family room—a sunny bay of windows in the living room, some arched interior entrances, and a two-and-a-half-car garage, accessed both by a driveway and from an alley. There are decks off both above-ground floors.

On a price-per-square-foot basis, the asking price comes in at $263, putting it between this house nearby that sold for $265 and this one on the same block as today’s house that sold for $244. That latter has just one full and one partial bath; today’s house has two fulls and a partial.

And there are two great dining or shopping areas close by: the Edison Park restaurants along Northwest Highway, and the humming core of suburban Park Ridge.

The last residents of the house paid $450,000 for it in 2005; they tried to sell it for as much as $548,900 starting in 2008, but eventually lost it in foreclosure. “Freddie Mac wants to sell properties quickly,” Zenkevicius says. “It’s not significantly under the market price” because the agency needs to be sensitive not to ding the surrounding community’s home values, “but it’s very competitive.”

So why are you still reading? Go make your bid.

Listing Agent:  Saul Zenkevicius of Z Team,  630-742-4065 and saul@callzteam.com