List Price: $1.15 million
Sale Price: $1.05 million
The Property: Classically beautiful from the keystone over the arched doorway to a prim trio of slender dormers, this 13-room home in Hinsdale was built on a big corner lot in 2001. Inside, there are five bedrooms, large formal rooms, and ten- and twelve-foot ceilings. According to Carol Lee Cikanek, the Coldwell Banker agent who represented the sellers, even the height of the basement “is generous and comfortable; it was dug out extra deep.”

The house has had two owners since it was completed. “[Both of them] took very good care of the house,” Cikanek says. “It was like buying new.” A former member of Hinsdale’s planning commission, Cikanek notes that the house’s construction predated changes in Hinsdale codes that would have required a smaller footprint for a newer home on the same lot. That could have led to “design flaws,” Cikanek says. “You might get a flat roof instead of that peak because of the need to put more square footage on the third floor, and the ceiling that goes with that.”

The house is within walking distance of Hinsdale’s picturesque downtown and train station, as well as the Monroe School, which children who live here would attend.

Price Points: The first residents of the house bought it from Cirrus, the builder, for $1.495 million. Cikanek says they moved out in about 2005, renting the home for two years to people who ultimately bought it from them. That buyer, identified in public records as Richard A. Howard, paid $1.51 million in March 2007. (Howard could not be reached for comment.) By early 2008, he had relocated for business reasons, Cikanek says, and he listed the house for sale with an asking price of $1.399 million. A series of price reductions lowered it to $1.15 million, which, Cikanek says, was the same as the appraised value. In mid-February, a buyer agreed to a contract to pay $1.05 million for the house; the deal closed April 1st. The buyers are not yet identified in public records of the sale.

Listing Agent  Carol Lee Cikanek, Coldwell Banker, 630-789-8280