In yet another example of R Kelly’s excellent judgment his Olympia Fields home at 1 Maros Ln is in foreclosure proceedings. The Lis Pendens was actually filed back on June 9 but the story just hit today. Perhaps the filing was only recorded more recently.
Yeah, this is the guy who was acquitted of one set of child pornography charges and had another set dropped.
The lot is around 3.7 acres and it looks like it was purchased for at least $1.5 MM in April 1997. The house, built in 1999, is 11,140 square feet with 6 full baths, 7 half baths, 2 fireplaces, and a 4 car garage. I always found it odd that the Cook County Assessors office manages to record the number of fireplaces in a house but not the number of bedrooms. Let’s assume it has 7 bedrooms.
According to a Crain’s article R Kelly has not lived in the house for more than a year and stopped paying his mortgage (he owes $2.9 MM) about the time that he stopped living there in an effort to get the bank to modify his loan. Hey, everyone else is doing it!
Needless to say this guy has been having problems big time. Apparently he has been hit with a $1-million lawsuit by his former management firm. According to Crain’s “the firm alleges that Mr. Kelly withheld commissions because the money was “needed instead to ‘pay off’ various individuals threatening to expose alleged illicit, embarrassing and unlawful conduct by Kelly, including sexual misconduct.” Well, that’s a shocker.
And apparently the home has a $2 MM lien on it by the Department of the Treasury. You know what that means. Let’s watch him wiggle out of that one.
It looks like R Kelly just doesn’t know how to play nice. According to Curbed Chicago in 2006 Olympia Fields “sued him for keeping tour buses and dogs at the property, and he was forced to tear down a guardhouse that was built without proper permits.”
At least his property taxes have been declining. They have dropped steadily from $258,996 in 2007 to $173,149 in 2009. That’s no surprise because the value of his home has declined from $5.2 MM to $3.8 MM. Karma’s a bitch.
Here is a view of the house from outside the front gate.
And this aerial view gives you a sense of the entire compound, complete with a lake and a basketball court.
