Listing Briefly Puts Sale Sign on Frank Lloyd Wright House

A long-troubled Frank Lloyd Wright house on Chicago’s West Side briefly resurfaced last week with a for-sale sign — online, at least. The problem: The listing wasn’t real.

The J.J. Walser House, a deteriorating Wright-designed landmark on Central Avenue in the Austin neighborhood, popped up on Zillow priced at $350,000, drawing quick attention from preservationists, neighbors and the real estate-curious. But the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and a local nonprofit working to save the home say the listing was illegitimate, according to Crain’s.

“This shows why we need to protect a vulnerable property like this,” conservancy executive director Barbara Gordon told the outlet. With ownership tied up in a prolonged foreclosure process, she said, “somebody found a hole” and appears to be trying to exploit it.

Fannie Mae, which took ownership of the property after a December foreclosure auction, confirmed the groups’ findings through a spokesperson, adding that steps were being taken to remove the unauthorized listing. The agency said it is clearing debris and preparing the home for an eventual legitimate sale, though no timeline has been announced, according to the publication.

The mystery listing appeared only on Zillow and its sister site Trulia, not on Redfin, Realtor.com or Homes.com. The seller’s contact information led to a dead end voicemail and unanswered emails, and Zillow did not immediately respond to questions about how the for-sale-by-owner listing was approved.

The $350,000 asking price raised eyebrows from the start. In December, two would-be buyers — Austin Coming Together, a nonprofit based across the street, and investor Andy Schcolnik — declined to meet the lender PHH Mortgage’s minimum bid of $240,000, citing the home’s extreme disrepair. At the time, Austin Coming Together estimated the property was appraised at roughly $65,000 and would require about $2 million in rehabilitation.

The price also sat near Austin’s median single-family home value of $362,500, according to Redfin — a mismatch for a structure with a collapsing roof, rotting windows and extensive interior damage.

Built in 1903, the Walser House is one of just seven Prairie-period Wright homes still standing in Chicago and is a designated city landmark. Preservationists have warned for years that deferred maintenance threatens its survival. The home fell into foreclosure after its longtime owner, Anne Teague, who had taken out a reverse mortgage, died in 2019.

— Eric Weilbacher