Gold Coast gut check: Mansion fetches less than half of original $9M ask

Home was on the market for five years

1421 N Astor St, Chicago with Anna Robertson with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty (Google Maps, Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty, Getty)

TRD Staff

Feb 24, 2023, 5:56 PM

Chicago’s Gold Coast luxury real estate market looked poised for a comeback to start the year, though one prominent sale feels more like a letdown for the ritzy neighborhood.

The home at 1421 North Astor Street sold for $3.94 million this week, less half its initial $8.95 million listing price when it hit the market five years ago, Crain’s reported. The final sale price is less than the amount chopped from the asking price across five separate cuts over the years.

The buyers “feel like they got a very good deal,” Anna Robertson, the Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent who represented them, told the outlet. Katherine Malkin of Compass was the listing agent for the home. Robertson didn’t identify the buyers, who are also not yet reflected in public records.

The sellers, personal injury attorneys Joe Curcio and Tracy Robb-Curcio, first cut the asking price by $1 million in June 2018, after six months on the market. Then again, a little over a year later, they dropped the asking to $6.8 million. After going on and off the market in the first half of 2020, the mansion took another small price cut in June and then another in October 2021. By December last year, the home dropped to its final asking price of $4 million — marking almost $5 million less than the original asking price.

The home was one of three listed for more than $4 million in the Gold Coast last month to go under contract, prompting speculation as to whether demand in the area was starting to recover after years of stagnation. Seven of nine homes seeking $4 million or more in the area had lingered on the market for 100 days or longer as of last month.

It’s not known how much the Curcios spent on the home when they bought it in 1993 from the Catholic Maryknoll Missionary Order, but Malkin previously told the outlet that the couple did extensive work renovating the mansion and preserving historical features.

Built in 1892 by lumber baron George Farnsworth, the home later became home to the Bensinger family, which is known for building and running the Brunswick Corporation for a century. Marknoll bought the house from the Bensingers in the 1940s and converted it from residential use to serve as the order’s headquarters.

The 10,000-square-foot house sits on a large 50-foot-by-160-foot lot, giving the home a rare, large yard.

— Victoria Pruitt