Luxe let-down: Saldanas get 37% below ask on Waldorf condo

It wasn’t quick or easy, but the founder of an options trading platform and his wife, a plastic surgeon, made the top 10 of Chicago’s priciest home sales for the year, getting $9.4 million for a full-floor Waldorf Astoria condo.

Scott Saldana, founder of SKTY Trading, and Elyssa Saldana took 15 months and trimmed their initial asking price by more than a third to reach a deal with the buyer, who isn’t yet identified in public records, Crain’s reported. The couple first listed the 6,400-square-foot, 55th-floor condo in June 2021 for $15 million in what was viewed as a sign of the downtown luxury market’s rebound amid the pandemic.

The condo was removed from the market then re-listed in May at $12.5 million. While the deal closed at a 37 percent markdown from last year’s initial listing price, it still provided the Saldanas with a gain over their 2010 purchase price of $6.3 million.

Other pricey deals within the last month in the Waldorf building at 11 East Walton Street–the other being billionaire Ken Griffin’s $10.2 million sale of the 7,400-square-foot, 37th floor unit–have helped fuel Chicago’s record-setting pace of high-end home sales this year.

So far this year, 120 homes sold for $4 million or more in the Chicago area, outdoing last year’s all-time-high of 101 such sales, with the surge in interest rates in 2022 leaving little impact on the area’s ultra-luxury buyers who tend to pay cash and rarely borrow through a mortgage.

Two-thirds of the city’s 15 priciest sales this year are downtown condos, although the segment seems to require some patience. Despite several notable sales, such as the record-setting $20 million deal at Trump Tower in March, the condo market lags behind Chicago’s single-family market on several data points. When the Saldanas relisted their unit in May, condos were spending more time on the market, on average, than detached single-family homes. In the first three months of the year, Chicago houses sold after an average of 61 days on the market while condos sold in an average of 99 days.

Griffin, who listed his Waldorf unit in July for $11.5 million shortly after announcing his company Citadel’s headquarters move to Miami from Chicago, took a haircut with his sale from the $13.3 million he bought it for in 2014.

Other high-end offerings in the 60-story Waldorf building completed in 2009 include a $9.6 million ask for a 5,600-square-foot, full-floor unit on the 58th story listed by agent Deanne Thomas of Deanne Thomas Luxury Properties.

Susan Miner of Premier Relocation represented the Saldanas, while Julie Harron of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyers.

– Sam Lounsberry

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