Waterfront sales in Glencoe (1), Winnetka (2), Wilmette (3), and Evanston (4). See details below.
In the past month, four multimillion-dollar homes on the North Shore lakefront have been sold—more than were sold in any single month in 2011. The quartet ranged in price from $2.325 million to $7.5 million, and they all shared views out over Lake Michigan. It appears to be a coincidence that the sales all closed within a few weeks of one another. “Lakefront property is always attractive, always something people are willing to pay to get,” says Alla Kimbarovsky, the Prudential Rubloff agent who sold the top-priced home in this cluster, a Glencoe house that went for $7.5 million. “We are seeing some movement with the waterfront properties, but it’s difficult to say why.”
Certainly today’s discounted prices have something to do with the mini-flurry of sales. But that doesn’t explain their close timing: as you will see, some were hung up for a while on other details that happened to get resolved this winter. Here are details on the four homes.
(1) GLENCOE
List Price: $7.785 million
Sale Price: $7.5 million
Sale Closed: January 20
This 13-room home has a remote-controlled elevator that goes down from its blufftop site to the private beach; there’s also an indoor lap pool whose glass walls showcase views of Lake Michigan. Though the sale closed ten days ago, the house actually changed hands in April 2008. It had been for sale since mid-2006 and was completed in 2007—but with the mortgage market tight, the sellers, identified by the Cook County Recorder of Deeds as Fayna and Michael Loyfman, offered to finance the buyers temporarily, Kimbarovsky says. That deal expired recently, and with a new mortgage in hand, the buyers finalized their purchase.
Listing Agent: Alla Kimbarovsky of Prudential Rubloff; 847-208-7212 or ask@allakimbar.com
(2) WINNETKA
List Price: $5.95 million
Sale Price: $4.9 million
Sale Closed: January 17
Completed in 2002, this 13-room home first went on the market in June 2009 with an asking price of $8.35 million. The Cook County Recorder of Deeds reports that J. Thomas Stanley and Linda Stanley paid $2 million for the site in 1999. There is no record of what they paid to build the Nantucket-style home. Atop the house on the lakeside is an open-air porch that the listing agent, Joanne Hudson, describes as providing “incredible panoramic views.”
Listing Agent: Joanne Hudson of the Hudson Co.; 847-971-5024 or Joanne@thehudsoncompany.com
(3) WILMETTE
List Price: $3.145 million
Sale Price: $2.325 million
Sale Closed: January 17
Along Michigan Avenue on Wilmette’s lakefront, this low-slung home looks barely there among the big mansions and the stately Michigan Shores Club. That’s because the home’s true focus is not the street but the lake. The lot is over 600 feet deep, giving the house, built in 1927, a long, resort-like stretch of lakefront land leading to the private beach. According to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, Daniel and Katherine Cheifetz bought the home in 2000 for $3.225 million. They first put it on the market in 2009, at $4.795 million. By March 2011, the asking price was $3.445 million, which was later cut by another $300,000. The final sale price was 72 percent of what the sellers paid for the house in 2000 and 48 percent of the original asking price.
Listing Agent: Claire Sucsy of Coldwell Banker, 847-425-3737 and Claire.sucsy@cbexchange.com
(4) EVANSTON
List Price: $2.375 million
Sale Price: $2.25 million
Sale Closed: January 24
This charming Tudor built in 1898 faces Lake Michigan across Sheridan Road and Evanston’s lakefront parkland. According to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, David Doyle had owned the ten-room house since 1992. It was the subject of some debate among Evanston officials this fall—because the contracted buyer—a limited liability company, with James Pritzker, who lives next door, as majority owner—applied for zoning approval to convert it into a bed and breakfast. Once the zoning was approved, the sale went through. Pritzker, the founder of the Pritzker Military Museum downtown, has also announced plans to convert a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Rogers Park into a bed and breakfast. The home had been on and off the market since December 2008. I could not determine its original asking price.
Listing Agent: Donna Zupancic of @Properties; 847-448-5360
Photograph: (Winnetka home) The Hudson Company