List Price: $5.375 million
Sale Price: $5.1 million
The Property: Last week, Steve and Kim Prosniewski—he’s a trader who produced a 2010 movie about the decline of Chicago’s trading floors—completed the sale of their 15-room Winnetka home. The house was on the market for just 14 days last November before going under contract, but the sale did not close until April 7th.
Prosniewski was a producer of Floored, which explored the lives of floor traders and the ten-year decline in their numbers as technology took over. Prosniewski traded in Chicago’s pits for two decades but now trades electronically from home, according to an interview with his alma mater, Lake Forest College.
Cook County Recorder of Deeds files show that in 1996, the Prosniewskis paid $1.1 million for an older home on an acre on Winnetka’s Ardsley Road, where members of the Crown family and other well-known people have or have had homes. The Prosniewskis tore down that house and completed construction on this seven-bedroom home in 1999. I could not determine the total cost of the project from public records.
Standing across a vast entry court behind wrought iron gates, the house has a classic shuttered and dormered façade dominated by pillars that frame the front door and, above that, a porch. Photos that accompanied the November listing show traditional-styled rooms, a long skylit hallway, a large wine cellar, a swimming pool with a pool house, and a broad rear lawn.
The house went on the market November 8, 2010, and went under contract November 22nd. Paige Dooley, the agent who represented the property, did not respond to a request for comment, and I could not reach the Prosniewskis. The buyers are not yet identified in public records of the sale.
Price Points: So far in 2011, this is the only Winnetka home to have sold for $5 million or more, according to Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), which also reports that, in 2010, there were three sales in that price range; there were two in 2009 and one in 2008.
Listing Agent: Paige Dooley of the Hudson Co.; 847-446-9600 or paige@thehudsoncompany.com