This 4-Bedroom SFH in Lakeview Is 11% Under the 2002 Purchase Price: 1431 W. Oakdale

This 4-bedroom single family home at 1431 W. Oakdale in Lakeview has been on and off the market for 3 years.

Since June 2009, it has been reduced $274,000 to $925,000.

Built in 1999 on a 24.8×123.8 lot, the listing says it is in the Burley school district.

The listing also says it has a “chef’s kitchen” with maple cabinets and stainless steel appliances.

The master bedroom has a spa bath with a 7 head shower.

There is a second floor library and a lower level recreation room.

The house has 3 fireplaces and a garage roof deck.

Now priced about 11% under the 2002 purchase price, how low will this go?

Dennis Shaffer at Baird & Warner has the listing. See the pictures here.

1431 W. Oakdale: 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2 car garage, no square footage listed

  • Sold in November 2001 for $635,000
  • Sold in September 2002 for $1.05 million
  • Originally listed in June 2009 for $1.199 million
  • Reduced several times
  • Currently listed at $925,000
  • Taxes of $16,379
  • Central Air
  • Bedroom #1: 18×15 (second floor)
  • Bedroom #2: 10×12 (second floor)
  • Bedroom #3: 16×12 (second floor)
  • Bedroom #4: 16×14 (basement)
  • Library: 14×8 (second floor)
  • Recreation room: 18×13 (basement)

38 Responses to “This 4-Bedroom SFH in Lakeview Is 11% Under the 2002 Purchase Price: 1431 W. Oakdale”

  1. The architect must design prisons in his other career.

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  2. I don’t know what’s worse this or the Park Ridge garage house.

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  3. “The architect must design prisons in his other career.”

    Actually, if they put a triangular pediment above the entrance, and colored in blue the little rectangle below the window, they could pass it off as a Michael Graves house. Something about it reminds me of his Humana building in Louisville, KY.

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  4. It is not my style but the design is not that bad. 1400 W Oakdale is a great location although it appears that you are directly across from the Church. That could be a bit of a pain in the ass on Sundays.

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  5. This is not an atypical home in this neighborhood – big, built in the late 90s, some questionable design and decorating choices and very little or no updating in the last 15 years. If the market sees this place like 1523 W. Barry or 1537 W. Wellington, then the price is a pipe dream. In order to command a price that starts with a 9, this property needs to present as a bargain compared to the new properties closing around or above $1.1 million in this area. Therefore, it’s in desperate need of decluttering, some staging and a lot of painting. As is, maybe somewhere in the low to mid 8s is doable. It’s ugly but people pay for space in Burley.

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  6. I will say the house looks like a bargain for the location if you can get it below 9. Seems like homes such as this were 1.5 or more just a few years ago. The interior isn’t unpleasant, so maybe there’s something that can be done for the exterior. But it would be expensive.

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  7. jjj: “it’s in desperate need of decluttering, some staging and a lot of painting.”

    Have you been in the house (honest question)? From the pix, I don’t see a lot of clutter, *totally* agree about the staging (what? 4? rooms with weird furniture layouts), and it’s painted completely neutrally.

    Other than renting staging furniture, what do you see wrong in the pix?

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  8. No curb appeal and a bland interior.

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  9. The home is ok and from the photos it is not cluttered. Sometimes the furniture can take over a space. Really contemporary stuff in a traditional home or college crap in a luxury estate are two obvious scenarios that come to mind. In this case the gold gold and the gold accents are a bit sharp. Then the furniture itself adds a bit too much personality to the rooms. It’s like having too many personal photos or momentos around. They become distracting and can shape a persons viewpoint of the home.

    In the end this one is not too bad. Someone will see past the issues.

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  10. Perfect for split face cinder block aficianados

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  11. ” From the pix, I don’t see a lot of clutter,”

    I agree, I meant more “cluttering” with what appears to be low-quality furniture with disparate styles that doesn’t help the place at all. All the gold, etc. Not traditional too much stuff on the counters.

    “and it’s painted completely neutrally…”

    From what I can see, every room in the house is painted the exact-same nearly white color. I hate that, and I think that a lot of people do, too, and can’t imagine how nice a place can look with some good paint. I think that having a place that looks like it hasn’t been painted since the walls were put up turns a lot of people off. Maybe it looks fresh in person, but it’s still fresh with the exact same boring paint in the entire house.

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  12. Why does it matter if it is in the Burley school district? That is still CPS, right?

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  13. Another interesting one in this area is 1532 W. Nelson, which is cheap at $570k and maybe even a little underpriced to move quickly. It went under contract immediately after coming on the market about 3 weeks ago, but looks like it just fell out of contract.

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  14. +1

    In all seriousness, how does one tell if these buildings have cinder block that was properly sealed?

    “Perfect for split face cinder block aficianados”

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  15. ” how does one tell if these buildings have cinder block that was properly sealed?”

    Basically, a masonry inspection will tell you what it needs. You should be able to see how water runs off of it (with the proper product, anything short of a firehose shouldn’t be able to get the block actually wet – the water should just run off). It could still have been sealed, but just be too old, but mostly a good sealing job should last for close to ten years. Tuckpointing, lintel repairs, glass block repairs, etc. are often needed, too.

    Basically, you do the external repairs and then work on the inside. If the block wasn’t correctly sealed or maintained, there is probably water damage where water penetrated, so you may have find and repair damaged drywall, insulation and framing. Usually that is relatively easy, and there isn’t usually much framing damage unless there was a ton of water.

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  16. For this price, I want something with at least a little curb appeal…or even neutral curb appeal. This is hideous.

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  17. This one suffers from some very specific locational issues. Comps in the neighborhood on more family friendly streets suggest so as well.

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  18. Most people I know who live next to them on Greenview, Wellington or Oakdale are pretty happy with AA – they say that they’re pretty good about considering how the stuff they do affects their neighbors It probably is not as family friendly along this stretch as streets with houses on both sides, and there are a lot of big 2 and 3 flats with coach houses and a lot of twentysomethings on this street, but that’s true of most of this area of Lakeview. That said, I haven’t tried to determine if there is any demonstrable cost to being on Oakdale here by looking at comps or anything.

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  19. Homes like this in the near million dollar range – which as G showed was substantially smaller market as recently as 1997 – are the reason why so many people move to the suburbs or other areas of the city. I got nothing against this place or the neighborhood but the crazy demand for homes and the ridiculously small number of them mean million dollar homes; and quite frankly, there’s no value there, it’s overvalued, and long term, where can the price go but down? The owners of these homes don’t buy them ever expecting to live there for long periods of time or in many cases, to pay any more than the interest.

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  20. All you really need to know is this:

    Document No. Executed Recorded Document Type Amount
    05/10/2011 05/19/2011 MORTGAGE $938,250.00

    To know where the price is headed on this near million dollar homes in Lakeview. There’s a market for these nice homes, surely, lakeview is a great area to live; but the market is not forever in the 7 figures, especially when it takes almost 7 figures to get the mortgage. This guy isn’t borrowing the money at 1% from MOrgan Stanley like the facebook zuckerberg does either for his mortgage, this is a wage earner so to speak…

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  21. I think that many homeowners near here pay these overvalued prices because of Blaine and Burley. Apart from better than average schools that you are zoned into, these neighborhoods do not over long-term value. The SoPo Corridor is nice and overs a commercial/town feel, but apart from this, it is far from the lake and loop. My concern with paying so much for these houses is that you cannot control CPS and the quality of schools. Who is to say you won’t get rezoned due to overcrowding (or just plain overcrowded to the point that quality drops) like those living in the Lincoln neighborhood might. Paying for schools in the suburbs with long histories of quality programming makes sense but in Chicago I don’t think its a good move b/c the school system is so politiicized and the quaility of each school may change with administration turn over. I’d prefer to live by the lake or closer in and change the selective enrollment process and/or pay for private rather than overpaying for a house in a neighborhood that really doesn’t have much to offer or justify such high prices.

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  22. “1400 W Oakdale is a great location although it appears that you are directly across from the Church. That could be a bit of a pain in the ass on Sundays.”

    Just what kind of Church is it!?!

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  23. I wonder if you could improve this house’s look (and get rid of the cinder block problem) by covering the front cinderblock with moderin ipe and the sides with that ultra modern material that those spec homes in the West Town/Ukrainian Villiage are using. This would update the outside and tansform it into a more modern aesthetic. Probably would need price cut to make this remodel reasonable, however.

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  24. Why was this so cheap in 2001 compared to the sale less than a year later?

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  25. “Why was this so cheap in 2001 compared to the sale less than a year later?”

    At least a gut, if not a teardown and new build.

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  26. I just puked. Didn’t even make it to the interior pics. Whatever the price, not worth the brain damage of coming home to that facade everyday.

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  27. “I think that many homeowners near here pay these overvalued prices because of Blaine and Burley.”

    Not sure about that one… Just across the street from the dividing line and only a block from the subject property. Again, I think there are very specific locational issues with that one.

    http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1447-W-Wolfram-St-60657/home/13363928
    http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1429-W-Wolfram-St-60657/home/13365266

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  28. It’s like they were trying to use up the leftover bricks from several other projects with a few home depot pavers thrown in for good measure.

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  29. “Just what kind of Church is it”

    I believe that it is Roman Catholic and called St. Alphonsus. Used to go there on occasion back in the day when I lived near this hood. The pain in the ass comment is that there will be increased traffic for church services on Sundays, weddings on Saturdays, school kids and funeral processions on weekdays and all may use that block of Oakdale for staging and or pick-up and drop-offs. Could be a bit annoying. Perhaps they use the block north as well.

    The upside is that you are 1/2 block from an Apple pancake at the polish place or 1 block from S&G which is a great greasy diner. To me 1431 W. Oakdale = getting fat!

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  30. It’s called “house poor”, spending down your savings to buy the big house and then not having enough spare cash to buy decent furniture. So you see hand-me-down furniture, cheap 1st apartment furniture, and sometimes bare minimum of furnishings. So this situation often when we were looking at houses in Nw Evanston and east wilmette a decade ago. Not surprised to see it here at a narrow-lot spec house too.

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  31. I saw this house on a brokers’ tour recently. It does have some nice touches that set it apart from the usual “McMansions.” The overhang on the upper floor in front is where the open library/den is. The master suite also has an “enclosed balcony” jutting out from the bedroom, giving a clear view of the backyards. The kitchen has a light, airy feel die to the light-color cabinets, a welcome change from the dark-wood cabinets and black granite that make many “contemporary” kitchens so depressing.

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  32. When I look at a house like this, it says of it’s owners ‘we should like the city, but we definitely hate city living’. Nothing about this house, inside nor out, states that the owner has any intention of accepting urban living – not in size, design, nor function. This isn’t a grand townhouse on Astor built by a noted architect with noted interiors for the truly wealthy, but rather a big vanilla box that’s out of scale and taste to the area that’s large for the sake of being large; it deliberately makes no attempt to assimilate. This place screams forgery on so many levels, including what appears to be the faux weathy (sub)urbanites who live here… how much did they finance this place for again?

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  33. Am I supposed to feel embarrassed for thinking that, while it might be a bit overpriced, it looks beautiful inside and out?

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  34. jay’s wife must be bitching about not enough closet space.

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  35. Sad_at_Plaza440 on July 30th, 2012 at 8:12 am

    Man, you guys are a tough crowd. I went to see this over the weekend and thought overall it looked good and was close to the current market price. Following are my random thoughts.

    Yes, the architecture is bland and functional, but I doubt living in an exotic or architecturally significant home is relevant for most people. The back of the house has the stair way to the basement along with huge windows, which give the recreation room in the basement plenty of natural light. The “library” is more like a wide hallway connecting the bedrooms on the second floor where the builder apparently couldn’t figure out a good use for the space. The second bedroom seems even smaller than 10 x 12; there’s currently a portable Murphy bed in there. The wood on the deck over the garage needs work, or probably replacement.

    Overall, my guess is that the place sells for between 880 and 900k.

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  36. “Am I supposed to feel embarrassed for thinking that, while it might be a bit overpriced, it looks beautiful inside and out?”

    Not at all. Different strokes, eye of the beholder, and all that.

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  37. This was delisted yesterday.

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  38. Sold for $880k.

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