Jonathon Brandmeier first put his River North mansion on the market back in June 2011, listing it at $5.9 MM. After more than 2 years without a price drop or a buyer he took it down in September of 2013. Then in June of this year he put it back on the market at $4.7 MM and had an accepted contract within 4 weeks. It just closed about a week ago at $4.69 MM.
Jonathon and his wife, Lisa, bought the house at 729 N Kingsbury in October 2007 for $4.46 MM – pretty close to the peak of the housing bubble. However, according to the listing, they’ve invested over $8 MM into the house so that suggests that they took almost a $4 MM loss on it, which may not be that surprising considering…
Obviously they did a lot of work on the house and it shows. It clearly has high end finishes but they are very personal – e.g. her master bath as seen in the slideshow below. (If you are reading this via email you will need to click on the article headline to get to the Web version to see the slideshow.) And these finishes look very dated already.
The even bigger issue may be that in this little River North single family home enclave – between Chicago and Erie and between Sedgwick and Larrabee – no house has sold above $5 MM in the last 9 years – and probably not before that either. So the house was clearly too expensive for the neighborhood. It may not have ever had a chance at $5.9 MM.
Here are some of the details on the property along with the MLS description:
- 11,000 sq ft
- 5 bedrooms
- 6 full bathrooms, 4 half bathrooms with his and her dressing rooms
- Theater room, exercise room
- An elevator to traverse the 6 different levels
- 3 outdoor spaces
- 6 fireplaces
- 3 car garage
- Property taxes = $57,058. Come on, Joe Berrios! You’ve got the property valued at only $3.2 MM. Why don’t you value my house at 68% of market value? I’m noticing a pattern with these really expensive homes.
11.000 sq ft mansion with the most elegant & magnificent finish level available in today’s market. Home spans 6 levels with elevator, multiple decks, 5 bedrooms, 10 baths, the most state of the movie theater imaginable, custom bar area,formal dining room, gourmet kitchen/great room, a master suite that extends an entire floor, huge skylights & windows & 3 car att garage. Audio, video and security components thru- out.
A phenomenal price for a spectacular home. Seller’s have over 8Million dollars into it. It was previously on the market for $5.99M. This price represents a $1.3M reduction. Home is done to the nines. Movie theater alone is 500k!
#JonathonBrandmeier #ExpensiveHomes #FamousHomes
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service discount real estate brokerage. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market, get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry, or you just think he’s the next Kurt Vonnegut you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.