Almost a year ago, when I originally posted on the listing of Ann Lurie’s mansion, it was the most expensive single family home ever listed in Chicago, priced at $18.75 MM. After sitting on the market for 316 days the house at 1547 N Dearborn finally had it’s price slashed on Friday – down to a mere $15 MM. Basically it’s still the most expensive house ever listed in Chicago. It depends upon whether or not you count the $16 MM listing at 1917 N Howe back in 2007 for a proposed custom home. That project was scaled way back and even the scaled back project never materialized.
But in reality this is really not a simple price reduction. Originally the listing included an adjacent 61 x 133 parcel, which I assumed to be the garden/ yard pictured in the slideshow. That parcel has now been split out and is being offered separately for $4 MM. So the total price still adds up to around $19 MM but they’ve made it more “approachable”. According to an article in Crain’s the lot will not be sold until the mansion is sold and the buyer turns down the opportunity to buy the lot: No Gold Coast Yard Sale For Ann Lurie. That makes perfect sense. The last thing anyone wants is a structure being built next door to the mansion which overnight reduces its value. The lot appears to be zoned RM5, which I believe permits someone to build a 4 story multi-family building there.
The Crain’s article goes on to point out that they repainted some of the rooms, even painting the master bathroom wood trim white, and removed a lot of the furniture because they thought it was to modern for the house. Ann no longer lives in the mansion anyway, so it’s not like it’s any inconvenience.
Let’s face it. Selling a home in this price range is just tough and there is really very little a real estate agent can do to “sell” the home. How many people with this kind of money are in the market to buy a vintage home in Chicago? The buyer pool is extremely small. So all the agent can really do, other than generate PR and distribute it on the Web, is make sure that as many wealthy people in the world as possible know that this property is available. There very well might be some rich person who doesn’t yet know that they need this house – in Chicago no less – to be truly happy.
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