Buyer balk, more price cuts hit high-end Chicagoland homes

Record-seekers are getting real and buyers are holding out in Chicagoland’s high-end home market.

The result has been another round of big money price cuts on luxury homes from Bucktown and the Gold Coast to the North Shore and out to the western suburbs, as sellers anxious to land deals before the wintertime market freeze show buyers they’re serious about wanting out.

In Lake Forest, a buyer in recent days exited a deal that was struck last month for the 15,000-square-foot home at 255 North Green Bay Road when it was listed at $7.9 million, according to listing agent Jennifer Ames of Engel & Voelkers Chicago. Her client since decided to drop the price by another $500,000 last week to just less than $7.5 million for the 1934-built home designed by noted architect David Adler, one of multiple reductions for the listing.

“It was a buyer who thought the idea of owning a David Adler house is really cool, an older person,” Ames said. “When they actually dug in they got overwhelmed and realized they bit off more than they could chew. With new construction it’s set it and forget it, but with a house like this, it requires someone who is going to care for it. Rather than sit with it through the winter, our price reduction is meant to signal we’ll work with buyers.”

Seasonality doesn’t have as much of an impact on real estate deal flow as it used to in Chicago, though, said Compass broker Brad Lippitz.

“Last winter, we had a crazy November and December,” Lippitz said. “There’s more savvy buyers and sellers, and the economy is much more complicated now than it used to be, not as predictable. It’s an easy fallback to say, ‘Wait until the spring market starts.’”

He and his client last week slashed their asking price on one of Wicker Park’s most striking homes on a triple-lot at 1736 North Wood Street by $550,000 to $6.7 million. Even the reduced price would crush the neighborhood’s record for most expensive home if it sells at or near that amount.

“I believe in riding the market and listening and adjusting,” Lippitz said, adding that the listing that hit the market in May at the higher price hasn’t been advertised for too long yet.

Sellers are keeping an eye on each other, too. Less than a block north of the Wicker Park listing, Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent Ryan Preuett has a client with a big Bucktown house at 1806 North Wood, where the ask has been dropped by nearly $300,000 to $4.5 million on the same day last week as Lippitz’s price cut.

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Preuett is also representing a Gold Coast listing at 1451 North Astor Street that shaved $505,000 off its asking price on Friday to just under $6 million.

“These are both higher end. Neither of them necessarily have to sell but they would both like to,” Preuett said. “There are certainly buyers in the market, though that pool has shrunk a bit. Sales have been lagging in the Gold Coast for the last couple years, there is essentially no new construction in its single-family market.”

And out in Naperville, seller Jane Brooks, who was at one point seeking a record $15 million on a massive spread near the suburb’s downtown, has eased back expectations, opting to divide the offering into pieces.

Earlier this year, Brooks and her @properties Christie’s International Real Estate agents Katie Minott and Kim Marino took the 15,400-square-foot home at 222 West Van Buren Avenue down to $12.75 million. This month, the parcel holding the home was cut to $8.2 million, and two adjacent vacant lots are being advertised at $1.5 million each, though the listing says offers on the empty land won’t be accepted until the house sells.