Neighborhood: University Village, Chicago
List price: $1.4 million
Sale price: $1.35 million

The Property: This new 4,299-square-foot, eight-room house has four bedrooms, three-plus baths, and a detached three-car garage. Situated in the fast-growing neighborhood that was once home to the ragtag Maxwell Street market, the house is close to a children’s park, a pretty, public rose garden, and a burgeoning shopping and dining district along Halsted Street. This house is the first completed of 43 single-family homes planned for the immediate neighborhood; about 30 of those homes have already been sold.

The Pros: With their trim brick facades and classic detailing, these blocks of single-family homes feel like an old-line haven of fine city dwellings. The University of Illinois at Chicago, St. Ignatius High School, and the many hospitals of the Illinois Medical District are all nearby-and the South Loop and the Loop are only a little farther away.

The Cons: This will soon be a lively, walkable neighborhood-there is already a slew of new restaurants and a Barbara’s Bookstore-but for now, it’s still a work in progress. Construction is heavy on the surrounding blocks, and even when that’s completed and the noise and the dust subside, there is still the Dan Ryan Expressway, which hangs overhead less than one block east.

Seller: According to the sales agent, the couple who contracted for this house made other plans and turned around and sold the place as soon as they closed on it (they never lived there). Their names are not identified in public records.

Buyer: Not identified in public records

Sales agent: River Realty’s Patricia Blagojevich-also known as the First Lady of Illinois