Chicago’s luxury housing drumbeat is getting a bit quieter.
A Beaux-Arts style mansion in the affluent Gold Coast that asked $13.5 million two years ago just had its asking price cut to $10 million. In suburban Highland Park, Michael Krasny, the billionaire founder of Computer Discount Warehouse, sold his Highland Park mansion this week for $3.53 million, about $2 million below his initial price, according to Crain’s.
At least 53 homes in Chicago have sold for $4 million or more so far this year, putting the pace of luxury sales on track to surpass 2021, when a record 101 homes met that threshold. Yet recession headwinds across the nation have rattled sellers and buyers, potentially slowing an overheated real estate market.
Tory Rezin and Dawn Mckenna of McKenna’s group at Coldwell Banker, who took over the Gold Coast listing at 15 West Burton Place about four weeks ago, said the price adjustment brought it in line with the local market. Of the 14 Chicago-area sales above $8 million in the past two years, four fetched more than $10 million, Rezin said.
“These metrics were a driving factor in our strategy to price right under $10 million,” Rezin said, adding that a newly built home would cost far more.
“There’s talk all over the nation of the market cooling off a bit,” McKenna said. “But what we’re seeing is that if you price things properly and it looks great, it gets absorbed.”
McKenna said that the mansion is rare in the Gold Coast, where condos are more common than single-family homes. It comes with another rarity: a three-car attached garage.
At the top of the market, setting a listing price is more complex, with less comparable homes. Even in record-setting deals, such as the $20 million sale of the penthouse at Trump Tower Chicago, the listing price was $10 million higher than the final sale.
McKenna doesn’t expect the Gold Coast home to stay on the market long and said they’ve gotten plenty of interest. Rezin and McKenna are marketing it both to hyper- local potential buyers in Gold Coast luxury condos and a broader audience in the regional and nationally.
“We’ve gotten very favorable attention and people understand that it is a real value,” McKenna said. “It’s the best deal on the market in Chicago.”
Correction, July 13, 2022: The fourth paragraph of this story has been corrected to show the broker’s first name is Tory.