Hinsdale mansion seeks record $9.6M in fast flip

There’s a record chaser in Hinsdale.

Owners of the 10,966-square-foot former home of the late Molex Inc. co-CEO Frederick Krehbiel have listed the home for $9.59 million, a price that would set a record in the western Chicago suburb, the Chicago Tribune reported.

If a deal for the home is struck, it would amount to a fast flip. The offering was made after its new owner bought it for $7.5 million in May.

Krehbiel, the nephew of former Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck, died in 2021 at 80. Koch Industries bought Krehbiel’s electronic components firm Molex for $7.1 billion in 2013.

The two-story, six-bedroom brick Classical Revival-style home sits on 3.14 acres across four separate parcels. It was built shortly after 1900 for Hinsdale settler Lemuel Freer, son of real estate developer L.C. Paine Freer.

The home originally had a third floor that included a ballroom and a boxing ring, but that floor was removed in 1934. Cole magnate Stuyvesant Peabody bought the mansion in the 1910s and it was also later owned by Old Spinning Wheel restaurant co-founder Charles Duncan.

The sellers bought the property from Krehbiel’s two sons in an off-market transaction through an Illinois limited liability company that’s managed by a separate Colorado-based LLC.

They’ve perhaps been encouraged to pursue the priciest deal ever for Hinsdale as the top end of Chicago’s housing market this year — defined as deals for $4 million or more — has kept close to the same pace of deals as the record seller’s market of 2021, even amid a broader real estate slowdown as rising interest rates move pricing.

The May sale of the property was the second-priciest ever in the suburb, just shy of the $7.7 million sale last year of 325 East Eighth Street that smashed the previous record of $5.5 million.

The entire property is listed for $9.59 million. The seller is also willing to sell just the home and 1.38 acres around it for a little less than $5 million.

The century-old home has seven full bathrooms and two half-bathrooms. There are wood inlay floors, dentil moldings, millwork, a paneled library and carved 18th-century chimney piece. The home also has a basement bowling alley that is being sold as-is.

Listing agent Dawn McKenna of Coldwell Banker is marketing the home on a real estate agents’ private listing network. She also marketed the previous record sale of Eighth Street.

Read more

Chicago

Wealthy western Chicago suburb lures homeowners into preservation

— Victoria Pruitt