Photography: Dennis Rodkin
List Price (Lake View): $1,050,000
List Price (Lincoln Square): $1,075,000
Sale Prices: $1 million each
The Properties: Two different houses in North Side neighborhoods went for exactly $1 million last week. Both were caught up in the tide of fast sales in hot neighborhoods—one is in the Blaine School section of Lake View, and the other is in Lincoln Square—and they got there the same way: by hanging out a price tag that was right for today.
The sellers of the Blaine School house paid $960,000 for it in 2006, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. During their time in the house, the sellers renovated the kitchen. “They made it a show-stopper,” says Juliana Yeager, one of two agents who represented the home when it went on the market in mid-February. Photos in the listing show a pretty sweet kitchen. There are four bedrooms, one of them in the basement, and a rooftop deck on the garage.
The house attracted roughly 30 showings and went under contract in 12 days. A key to its fast move: price. A full-scale, high-end kitchen renovation can easily cost more than $40,000, which is the difference between what these sellers paid for the house seven years ago and what they sold it for. Potential buyers who did their research detected a well-priced deal.
The sellers of the Lincoln Square house took longer to get to the right price. That’s understandable, because they had done extensive, costly renovations, converting a greystone two-flat into a single-family home. They paid $417,000 for it in 2001, according to the Recorder. At the end of the ensuing gut rehab, the home had six bedrooms, a wine cellar, three fireplaces, and rooftop decks on the house and the garage.
They first listed the home for sale in May 2011, asking $1.349 million. That may have reflected what they had in it, but it’s a lot for the location, which is north of Foster Avenue, outside the heart of Lincoln Square in Bowmanville. The house lingered on the market for more than twenty months, then went off the market briefly. It came back on in January with an asking price of $1,075,000, and “that’s when we started burning up the market,” says Deborah Hess, the most recent listing agent (it had always been in the same office, Conlon, but with other agents).
By then, the market itself was heating up, too. Within six weeks, the house was under contract. The sale closed April 30, the same day as the Blaine School house did.
The moral of the story: Homes are selling fast if they’re priced to suit the market.
Price Points: Nothing in the suburbs sold for exactly $1 million last week that I know of. Here are two that were just a smidge above that million-dollar mark:
In Park Ridge, this newly built house sold for $1,050,000 on May 1.
In Oak Brook, this 13-room home whose listing sheet says it has garage space for eight to ten cars sold May 1 for $1,025,000.
Listing Agent (Lake View): Juliana and Benjamin Yeager of @Properties, 773-606-1966; theyeagerteam@gmail.com
Listing Agent (Lincoln Square): Deborah Hess, 773-865-3327, deborahhess@conlonrealestate.com