Page 56 - Introducing Janet Owen

Press for Sale of 1866 North Howe Street

Highest Lincoln Park Single Family Home in

Multiple Listing Service History!

Three Very Big Sales Make This a December to Remember

An 11,000-square foot Lincoln Park house sets a post-crash real-estate record in Chicago.
By Dennis Rodkin

December 23, 2013

Last week was a big one for high-priced homes in the city: there were three sales in the $6 million-plus range, including one that set
a post-crash record for houses within the city. In the same timeframe last year, there were no sales at that price level.

In fact, in all of December 2012, there was only one city sale at over $6 million, a Gold Coast mansion that a trust in the name of
Richard Driehaus bought December 27 for $6.225 million. And in the suburbs, somebody celebrated New Year’s Eve by closing that
day on a $12.25 million purchase in Winnetka.

This year’s not over yet, but even if there aren’t any more big closings in the remainder of the month, this has already been a Decem-
ber to remember in downtown real estate.

List Price: $10 million
Sale Price: $9.035 million

This 11,000-square-footer on Howe Street in Lincoln Park has set high-water marks
for city houses a couple of times now. When it sold in August 2010 at $8.5 million, it
was the highest-priced sale in the city in three and a half years.

It sold again last Monday for $9.035 million—the highest price anyone has paid for a
house in Chicago since the crash, as I noted last week in an article on the failed
Michael Jordan auction. The listing agent, Janet Owen, explained that high-end homes
sell when priced to meet the present market, which Jordan’s isn’t.

Even though this Lincoln Park sale is a record-setter, don’t count the half-a-million
increase over the mansion’s 2010 sale as profit for seller Joe Nicholas. In 2011, he
bought the house next door for $1.29 million, according to the Cook County Recorder
of Deeds. He demolished that house and converted its lot into his mansion’s side yard,
which we showed you last February in a video. Nicholas’s combined purchase price
for the mansion and its side lot was $9.79 million, seven percent less than he collected
in last week’s sale of the combo.