Hyde Park mansion sold for $4.2M in December, record price for Chicago homes south of Roosevelt Road

A Hyde Park mansion sold for $4.2 million at the end of December, a record-price for a Chicago home south of Roosevelt Road.

The sale price of the century-old, five-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot property on Woodlawn Avenue, surpasses the $3.96 million that buyers paid for a Kenwood mansion in August, according to Crain’s. It exceeded the $3.95 million sale in 2013 for the former home of the founder of the Adler Planetarium.

The Woodlawn Avenue mansion was listed in March 2020 at $4.75 million. The buyers are Edip Pektas, a venture capital executive, and his wife Dina Rehab who plan on using the property as their second home. The couple lives in Inverness, a northwest suburb, 40 miles from Hyde Park.

Sellers Linda and Brian Hanessian told Crain’s at the time of the listing that the house was extensively restored after they bought the property 20 years ago. The home has a broad stone fireplace flanked by wood bookcases, leaded glass windows and a wood bench built into the base of the windows.

The sale of the Woodlawn Avenue house brings the tally of homes sold for $4 million or more to 101 over the past 12 months, doubling the average in the previous six years of 52 sales. Previously, the most $4 million-plus homes sold in a single year was 73 in 2018. Among the top 10 residential sales last year, eight were condos in the city.

A six-bedroom, 8,800-square-foot condo unit at 840 North Lake Shore Drive sold for $11.25 million in July was the priciest transaction, which eclipsed the previous year’s $9.5 million sale of a five-bedroom Winnetka lakefront mansion.

Of last year’s transactions, 70 came from the city’s North Side. Real estate agents attributed the boom to a bullish stock market and low mortgage rates. The minimum sale price of the 50 top home sales in 2021 was $4.95 million, up from $4 million since 2015, according to Crain’s.

[Crain’s] – Connie Kim