List Price: $949,000
Sale Price: $857,500
The Property: The Park Ridge family who bought this new house that had stood unsold for nearly three years got the place for about half of what the builder had originally wanted. “There’s a lot that the builder put in that I don’t think he would have done if he’d known he would sell in the [$800,000s],” says Christina Ezzo, the Re/Max 1st Class agent who represented the buyers. She points to the Indian slate flooring, the fireplace and bar in the basement, the elaborate kitchen, and the rooftop deck off the master suite as amenities that wouldn’t ordinarily be available in this price range in Park Ridge.

The buyers—whom she wouldn’t identify, and whose names are not yet in the public records—had been shopping for a while in the upper $700,000s. “But there was nothing that had all the space they wanted,” Ezzo says. She eventually suggested they start looking above $800,000, and that was about the time that Builders Creations, which put up this 12-room house, cut the asking price into the $900,000s. The buyers made an offer that seemed low—$857,500—but the builder accepted it. The deal closed February 2nd.

Ezzo notes that the transaction was not a foreclosure or even a short sale, just “a house [where] the builder isn’t going to make much money.” The advantage to it not being a distressed property, she says, is that “with those, a lot of times you have water damage or mold or other problems from neglect. But this was in very good condition.”

I first wrote about this house at Thanksgiving 2008, including it in my annual roundup of long-unsold houses that I had dubbed “turkeys.” I wrote at the time that this house’s piecemeal architecture might have been one reason it was lingering on the market. But for a pair of buyers who were moving up from a home that Ezzo says is in the $450,000-to-$500,000 range, getting this one, with its finishes targeted to a $1.6-million buyer, is like moving up two or three rungs on the real-estate ladder all at once.
        
Price Points: In 2006, when it was under construction, the house had an asking price of $1.6 million; its $857,500 sale price is 53 percent of that. At the Baird & Warner website, I found three houses on the market in the $850,000 range in Park Ridge. Each one of them was smaller than this house, with fewer bedrooms and less-lavish basements.

Listing Agent: N/A