List Price: $2.395 million
Sale Price: $2.15 million
The Property: Howard Gottlieb and his wife, Anne, have sold their 11-room house on a secluded lane in Winnetka. The Gottliebs paid $2.25 million for the Colonial-style residence in 2002, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. It was built in 1962 on a little less than an acre.

According to Joanne Hudson, the Hudson Co. agent representing the Gottliebs, her clients completely renovated the home’s interior, in the process creating a two-room master suite on the first floor with two separate baths. “They maintained everything beautifully,” she says, including the swimming pool and the landscaped grounds. “It was in meticulous condition, so nobody had to do anything [to the house].”

The general partner of an Evanston investment firm, Glen Eagle Partners, Howard Gottlieb has been a financial supporter of numerous Democratic candidates for Congress, as well as of Barack Obama, both in the 2008 campaign  and in this year’s reelection campaign. Between them, the Gottliebs donated $100,000 to the cost of Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

In 2010, Howard Gottlieb was appointed to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; later that year, Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times reported, Gottlieb stepped down from that post to accept another appointment from Obama, this one to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. In Chicago, Gottlieb has supported the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera, and the Ravinia Festival.

Price Points: The Gottliebs put the house on the market February 6, had a contract to sell by March 5, and closed the deal on April 23—a notably fast sale in today’s climate, even with the recent pickup in activity that many North Shore agents have been telling me about. Hudson attributes the quick sale to the fact that the Gottliebs, who, she says, are downsizing, priced the house correctly. Their final sale price came at a 5 percent loss from their 2002 purchase price (not including whatever they spent on renovations). I could not reach the Gottliebs for comment, and the buyers are not yet identified in public records.

Listing Agent: Joanne Hudson of the Hudson Company; 847-971-5024 or Joanne@thehudsoncompany.com