Palmolive Condo Sells at 20-Year low in Gold Coast

Another Palmolive condo has sold for less than it did two decades ago.

A full-floor unit at the Art Deco landmark at 159 East Walton Place closed Monday for $5.5 million — a discount not only to its seller’s basis but to its mid-2000s price tag. The three-bedroom, roughly 5,500-square-foot condo had been owned by David Herro, partner and deputy chairman at Harris Oakmark, who paid nearly $6.8 million for it in 2013. The prior owner bought it in 2006 for $5.8 million, according to Crain’s.

Herro first listed the property in July 2020 for $10.9 million, testing the market at the height of pandemic uncertainty. After a series of price cuts, Herro was asking just under $6 million when it went under contract in January. Public records do not yet identify the buyers. Katherine Malkin of Compass represented them and said via text that they “have long admired the property.” Ken Jungwirth of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate had the listing, according to the publication.

Herro’s hit may be steeper than the raw numbers suggest. The listing described an extensive rehab, though the cost of those renovations is unknown.

Even at a discount, the deal ranks as the third-highest-priced home sale in Chicago so far this year, trailing only a $6.5 million Lincoln Park mansion and a $6 million Gold Coast house on Dearborn, the outlet reported. That’s the reality of the high-end condo market, where values remain well below their 2000s peaks, though buyers are writing multimillion-dollar checks again.

Eight of the highest-priced city home sales last year were condos, ranging from $7.4 million to just over $10.1 million. In November, the family of a late homebuilder sold a unit for about 46 percent of its 2007 purchase price. In April, another condo traded below both its 2009 and 2005 prices, according to the outlet. A February 2025 sale also closed millions under its 2007 and 2015 benchmarks.

Vince Vaughn unloaded the final pieces of his assembled Palmolive condos a decade ago. After once seeking $24.7 million, he sold three units for $12.1 million, eking out a gain of less than 1 percent, according to the publication.

Some of the building’s headwinds are bigger picture issues, including downtown crime perceptions, shifting buyer preferences and competition from newer luxury towers in the West Loop and Lakeshore East.

— Eric Weilbacher