List Price: $3.45 million
Sale Price: $3 million

The Property: Though it looks like two townhouses of different vintages, this is actually a single Lincoln Park residence, its two sides built decades apart. From 1999 until October 2007, the 12-room house belonged to Joseph Cari Jr., a once-prominent Democratic fundraiser. In 2005, Cari was indicted on federal charges related to a complex series of board appointments and campaign-fund donations—a tangled web unraveled by Chicago’s Steve Rhodes in a December 2005 article. In September 2005, Cari entered a guilty plea on one charge of attempted extortion.

Prior to his legal troubles, Cari had been a national player in Democratic politics, working for each of the party’s general-election presidential candidates from 1980 to 2004 and holding a variety of positions on the Democratic National Committee. He is now the senior managing director of International Capital and Trade, which arranges investments in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and other countries in the Middle East. Cari, who an associate said was traveling internationally, could not be reached for comment.

The house, which Cari bought in August 1999 for $1.8 million, sits on a double lot. The combination of newer and older wings makes it possible to have a suburban-style layout, with four relatively large bedrooms and a sitting room adjacent to the master bedroom on the second floor. Cari listed the property for sale in June 2007, asking $3.45 million. In early November, he sold it for $3 million to a buyer whose identity could not be determined from public records. Cari’s agent, Debra Dobbs, did not respond to requests for comment.

Price Points: According to data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois, the $3 million paid for this house is the highest sale price on record over the past 12 months for any Lincoln Park home that predates the neighborhood’s new-home building boom that began in the mid-1990s (the one exception is a larger house that was gut-rehabbed inside by a developer).

Listing Agent: Debra Pallotto Dobbs, Baird & Warner, (312) 640-7010