Heritage Luxury CEO sells his house for $9.5M, marking one of priciest this year

The CEO of a Chicago firm that bills itself as “the premier luxury builder on the North Shore” lived up to his own description.

Heritage Luxury Home’s Leo Birov sold the seven-bedroom house he built in Kenilworth for $9.5 million, marking one of the region’s priciest single-family sales this year, Cook County property records showed.

Birov paid $5.85 million for the property in 2018 and initially considered either upgrading it by a swimming pool for $9 million or demolishing the home for a larger home that could fetch as much as $13 million, Crian’s reported that year.

He went with the second option, including a swimming pool that overlooks Lake Michigan, an elevator and a media and recreation room. While the price didn’t match what he envisioned three years ago, it was still 60 percent more than he paid.

The buyer of the 8,700-square-foot home on Sheridan Road was an entity described as Thackeray LN. Birov’s wife, @properties agent Milena Birov, represented him.

The price tag lags behind a Lincoln Park mansion that closed for $12.5 million in April, the most expensive so far this year and the priciest Chicago home sold since 2015.

Four of five of the most expensive home sales this week were in Lincoln Park, a perennially popular upper-echelon market. Some $3.3 million of sales on N. Clifton Avenue and N. Dayton Street topped the list for transactions.

Luxury sales in the city lagged last year as residents moved to the suburbs, seeking more space and privacy. The city accounted for about 40 percent of the total number of luxury sales in 2020, down from 50 percent the previous year.