Photo: Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $2.799 million
Sale Price: $2.639 million
The Property: This fetching 17-room home completed in 2009 sold July 29 for the highest price ever paid for a publicly-traded home in Western Springs. In fact, it blew past the previous record-holder, a house just two blocks away that sold for half a million dollars less back in 2009.
One reason: it’s so darn pretty. “It’s everybody’s darling,” says Dawn McKenna, the Coldwell Banker agent who listed the home. “This gal who built it had a great designer’s eye and did everything in high style, executed it flawlessly.”
It also has location going for it; the home is on a block of stylish houses—some new, some old—that is a short walk from a Metra station, the well-regarded elementary school, and the diminutive center that includes a few restaurants. Also nearby is the Bemis Woods forest preserve.
The home’s allure starts, McKenna notes, by taking maximum advantage of its corner lot: Multiple dormers and rooflines keep the impression from being flat. “It’s not just a jazzed-up front and you don’t see the side and back,” she says. “There are three vantage points [front, side and rear], and each wall was perfected.”
Inside, as the listing photos show, the six-bedroom home has a refined air. There’s a gracious foyer with stairs arcing up to a curved landing, ceilings with wood beams or decorative plaster, and a pair of glass-fronted bookcases flanking a substantial fireplace. There’s not one but two bars, one large one in the main entertaining section of the basement and the other, smaller one close by the five-person golf simulator that is in a separately-accessed section of basement.
McKenna would not comment on the sellers or why they sold the house after creating it only a few years ago. Public records identify them as Michael and Bridget McDermott, but it’s not the Michael McDermott who sang this. That one lives in Chicago.
Price Points: This is the highest-priced Western Springs sale that has been recorded with MRED, the multiple-listing service. Other homes in town may have been built for or sold for more in private transactions. It first came on the market in February, with an asking price of $2.995 million; that was cut to $2,799 million in April.
There is one house on the market now that is trying to steal this one’s crown. Its asking price is $2.699 million. Assuming it sells for more than $2 million, it will be only the third in town to have done so, following today’s home and the old record-setter.
Listing Agent: Dawn McKenna of Coldwell Banker, 630-546-3763, dawn@dawnmckennagroup.com