List Price: $9.95 million
Sale Price: $7.2 million
The Property: The 4,300-square-foot penthouse atop the Bloomingdale’s building—at Michigan Avenue and Delaware Place—was sold on April 28th for $7.2 million. That’s just 72 percent of the asking price that its seller, the wholesale grocery executive Jeffrey Levitetz, had been asking for it when he put it on the market in mid-March.
A few weeks before the sale closed, Crain’s reported that a buyer had agreed to pay more than $9 million for the property. Levitetz had paid $4 million for the condo in June 2006, and Crain’s reported that he then spent “roughly $5 million . . . on renovations,” for a total expenditure of $9 million. Levitetz’s agent, Pamela Miles of Prudential Rubloff, would not reveal how much her client spent on remodeling—which was completed in 2008 by Marvin Herman—but disputes the Crain’s claim. “There was no loss [on the recent sale],” she says.
The property went under contract March 29th, just 18 days after it was put on the market. Miles says that she wasn’t surprised her client quickly accepted an offer that knocked more than $2.7 million off the asking price. “It’s a tough market,” she says, “and we don’t see a lot of sales at this level. Sellers have to look at every offer. I suspect [Levitetz] was ready to move on.”
Levitetz, the founder and chief of Purity Wholesale Foods, is a Deerfield native now based in Florida. He did not respond to a request for comment. In 2001, Levitetz bought a $12.5 million, 17,000-square-foot Florida home. I could find no record of him selling that place. In 2002, he purchased a $3.7 million home, also in Florida, that he later put on the market for $4.995 million. That residence does not appear to have sold yet, either.
Today’s condo occupies the 66th story of the Bloomingdale’s building, its highest residential floor. “[It has] 11-foot ceilings and gorgeous views everywhere,” Miles says. Photos that accompanied the listing show extensive millwork and plaster ceiling details.
This is the third time Miles has sold the same condo. She sold it as raw space when the building first went up, in 1989, for a price that is not in public records. Those buyers, Lee and Suzy Stahl, finished out the property and put it up for sale in late 2004 (it was their in-town residence, and they weren’t coming to it enough from their primary home in southwest Michigan). They initially asked $7.5 million for the condo, but dropped their price over time and eventually sold it to Levitetz. This time around, Miles represented the seller, Levitetz, and the buyer. “It’s been a very nice unit for me,” she says. The buyer’s name is not yet in public records.
Price Points: The same day as the penthouse sale closed, a 3,000-square-foot duplex on parts of the 63rd and 64th floors also sold, for $2.25 million, after five weeks on the market—another quick sale. Those sellers, whose names are not in public records, came closer to getting their asking price than Levitetz did; they got 93.9 percent of their $2.395 million asking price. (They also made 7 percent over their 2006 purchase of the condo, when they paid $2.1 million.) They sold the place fully furnished, exactly as they bought it, says their agent, Helen Jaeger Roth of Koenig & Strey Real Living. Of the two rapid sales at the Four Seasons, she commented, “People want a safe commodity now, and this building is a very known commodity.”
Listing Agent: Pamela Miles of Prudential Rubloff; 312-368-5322 or pmiles@rubloff.com