Will adjacent Lincoln Park homes listed for $5.3M survive a sale?

A pair of Lincoln Park homes next to each other on North Burling Street that share an owner are now sharing a listing — and perhaps a fate involving demolition considering some recent scrambles for land to host newly built mansions in the neighborhood.

The owner, James B. Kargman, is trying to sell both residential properties stretching from 2221-2225 North Burling across three contiguous lots for $5.3 million. The listing comes after one of the two homes sat on the market individually for a year. The combined offering gives potential buyers a path to creating a large vacant lot, a type of property that has proven lucrative for sellers in the neighborhood as of late.

The larger of the two, an 8,000-square-foot home with five bedrooms and six bathrooms, is seeking $4 million in a separate listing of only that home. The smaller, 2,000-square-foot property has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and is asking $1.25 million. The larger listing was custom built in 1997 and includes an elevator, recreation room and a 2.5-car heated garage.

The $4 million listing is owned by Kargman, according to Cook County Property Records. Kargman is also listed as the officer for the limited liability company that owns the smaller listing. Jane Domurot, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago, is marketing the properties, and didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Even though Chicago’s luxury market has had a consistent flow of sales, many sellers have been forced to make price cuts to sell homes, even on properties that flirted with records. The $4 million listing on Burling already had $1 million slashed from its price since it hit the market in October 2021. The smaller property wasn’t listed until November of this year.

Listing the homes together allows several options should someone purchase both, such as renting one property and living in the other. The two properties combine for a rare 70-foot-wide lot in Lincoln Park — an aspect emphasized by the combined listing — should the buyer opt to tear down both homes and build a mega-mansion on the site. The larger home is already on two lots totalling 48 feet wide.

Scraping the homes to rebuild something bigger wouldn’t be an uncommon move for Lincoln Park, where ultra-luxury listings are the norm and developers spend millions and years assembling land for high-end redevelopment.

That’s true of a recent $9 million sale in Lincoln Park, a record price for land in the neighborhood despite not having a home on the property.

That property, at 1909 North Orchard Street, is a combined four lots that were sold as part of a custom design project by BGD&C Homes, a high-end Chicago builder whose president is Rodger Owen. A new home will be designed for its client at a price likely exceeding the land cost to make it one of the city’s most expensive single-family residential properties.

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