Page 20 - Introducing Janet Owen

Owen Lists and Sells Top Two Recorded Sales 2015

The 50 priciest home sales of 2015

Dennis Rodkin | February 27, 2016

Hey, big spenders, you'll have to dig a bit deeper to buy one of metro Chicago's priciest homes.

Last year, the most expensive house here went for $28 million, while even the lowest-ranked property on the top 50 list cost $4 million.
(Scroll down for photos and sale details on the top 15.) The comps from 2014: $10.9 million for the priciest and $3.8 million for the three
homes tied at No. 50. Another sign that the high-end market is hot: Six properties sold for more than $10 million in 2015, versus just two
the year before.

"An increase of that much is remarkable," says Janet Owen, an agent at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices KoenigRubloff
Realty Group who represented the sellers of the two highest-priced homes sold on the open market in 2015. "It reflects the
confidence that buyers at the higher levels of our market have."

And yet the high-end market still has not recovered from the real estate bust of the previous decade. Last year, 2,362 houses and con-
dominiums sold for $1 million or more, according to a report produced for Crain's by Midwest Real Estate Data, the northern Illinois
multiple-listing service. While that's up from 2014's total of 2,176 and almost 75 percent higher than the post-recession low of 1,363 in
2011, it trails the 2,433 sales in that price range in 2006, the market's peak year.

The not-quite-there-yet recovery in luxury homes reflects the status of the overall residential real estate market in the Chicago area.
Median home prices were essentially flat in 2015, while new home sales declined.

Other cities, however, are boasting record high prices. New York notched condo sales of $100 million and $200 million last year, the
latter to Ken Griffin, CEO of Chicago-based Citadel and the richest person in Illinois. In Miami, five sales hit $25 million or more; the
highest, at $60 million, was another buy by Griffin. (In Chicago, Griffin was the city's third-highest seller, unloading a condominium at
the Waldorf Astoria for $16 million.)

Last year's highest-priced sale was a Winnetka house sold by billionaires Steven and Nancy Crown to a trust in their name, according
to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. The couple and their attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Four of the other top five sales in 2015 were also private transactions and not marketed through the multiple-listing service.

In 2014, the top sale was a lakefront home in Glencoe that was purchased for $19.5 million by then-Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofsky.

Estates along the Lake Michigan shoreline have long held an understandable allure for affluent buyers, but in the past two years, "the
lakefront has been hot with activity," says Jena Radnay, an @properties agent on the North Shore who represented both the sellers
and the buyers in a $7 million transaction on Wilmette's lakefront, the highest-priced open-market sale in the suburbs.

But the North Shore is no longer the only address for the 1 percent. In 2015, six of the 10 priciest properties were in the city, in the Gold
Coast and Lincoln Park. This lines up with the ongoing shift among big-ticket buyers away from suburban estates and toward city pent-
houses. "The baby boomers have led the real estate market throughout their lives," Owen says, "and now they're buying homes down-
town much more than in the suburbs."

Original Link: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160227/ISSUE01/302279989/chicagos-luxury-home-market-rises-in-2015-with-
2362-sales-at-1