List price: $975,000
Sale price: $940,000

The Property: This classic red-brick colonial with three bedrooms, two-plus bathrooms, and two fireplaces provided a rare opportunity to get an appealing, nicely updated home in exclusive Kenilworth for under $1 million-and it has played that role twice in the past year. Built in 1929, the house sold for $5,000 less than the price it had brought just ten months before, in June 2006. And that was with a few significant upgrades since that earlier sale: repair to a basement leak and new landscaping. “My sellers made some very nice improvements,” says their agent, Julie Miller of the Hudson Company, but she declined to explain why they resold so soon. “I would have loved to see them get more, but given that they wanted to sell in a relatively short period of time, we’re fine.”

In June 2006-after it had been put on the market with a recently rehabbed kitchen, master bath, and second bath-the house sold for $10,000 more than its $935,000 asking price after just two months. Those buyers (the most recent sellers) then put the house back on the market in December, six months after closing on their purchase of it. With the upgrades, they initially priced it at $985,000. They later dropped their asking price to $975,000 before agreeing to sell for $940,000. That deal closed on April 19th.

Price Points: At either selling price-this April’s or last June’s-the house was a good buy. It stands on a block of pretty homes within walking distance of a Metra station, and any children who might live here would go to two premier schools: Joseph Sears Elementary and New Trier Township High.  And it is relatively affordable in these upper-end environs: of 24 sales in Kenilworth in the past 12 months, only seven have gone for under $1 million, according to data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois. “That house is in the hot price range,” Miller says. “It’s very hard to get into the New Trier district in a nice house in good condition for under a million dollars, sad to say.”

Buyer: Not yet identified in public records

Sales Agent:  Julie Miller, the Hudson Company