Looking for a SFH with an In-Ground Heated Pool? 6087 N. Kirkwood in Sauganash
This 5-bedroom Tudor English manor at 6087 N. Kirkwood in Sauganash has been on and off the market since September 2014.
If it looks familiar, that’s because we chattered about it in November 2016. See the chatter here (which was crazy- by the way.)
If you recall, it’s a unique property.
Built in 1937, it has many of its vintage features intact including cove moldings, custom millwork, historical lead glass windows, arched doorways and two wood burning stone fireplaces.
It’s on an oversized corner lot measuring 72×125 which allows for a rare 4-car heated/cooled garage.
Because of the large lot, there space for an outdoor heated in-ground swimming pool with an outdoor kitchen, a gazebo/cabana and an outdoor stone fireplace. You can vacation at home all summer.
It has a gourmet kitchen with a wine refrigerator.
The listing says the house is over 6,000 square feet.
Four out of the five bedrooms are on the second floor including the master suite.
There are also plenty of family spaces including a playroom on the third floor and a family room and recreation room in the finished basement.
If you’re not using the pool, or it’s winter, you can always work out in the basement exercise room and hang out in the sauna.
In March 2016, it was listed at $1.799 million.
Over 2 years later, it’s been reduced $99,000 to $1.7 million.
What will it take to sell this property?
Michael Mitchell at Coldwell Banker now has the listing. See the pictures here.
6087 N. Kirkwood: 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, over 6,000 square feet, 4 car heated garage
- Sold in April 1993 for $575,000
- Sold in November 2005 for $925,000
- Originally listed in March 2016 for $1.799 million
- Reduced
- Currently listed at $1.7 million
- Taxes were $14,496 in 2016 and are still $14,496
- Central Air
- Oversized lot of 75×125
- 2 wood burning fireplaces
- Outdoor heated pool
- Outdoor kitchen
- Sauna
- Bedroom #1: 19×20 (second floor)
- Bedroom #2: 19×13 (second floor)
- Bedroom #3: 15×13 (second floor)
- Bedroom #4: 15×11 (second floor)
- Bedroom #5: 15×14 (third floor)
- Exercise room: 14×10 (basement)
- Family room: 15×16 (basement)
- Recreation room: 11×31 (basement)
- Playroom: 26×21 (third floor)
Cool house. I’m even madder about my own tax bill now, though.
I’m with you, Stephanie. Those taxes seem awfully low, especially compared to mine on a much cheaper home!
Those taxes are some serious B.S. I hope this place gets re-assessed at their asking price and continues not to sell.
Cool place tho
yeah… how in the fuck am I paying more in taxes than this dickhead!
What a beautiful home. That cabinet in the dining room made my jaw drop, among other things like the floors and staircase. I can’t help but think about what wild pool parties one could throw here in the summer.
I doubt there’s much demand in this neighborhood for a house at this price point. I would much rather buy a more modest home in a better location that is closer to downtown with more restaurants/culture/action.
Maybe helmet could chime in again and give us an update on the “Muslim/Hindi push west down Peterson and Devon” and how flighty the whites are getting lol
Stephanie and Mary, taxes on this property are actually $18,242 (2017) and they should be going up more next year (for 2018 billing) as it was reassessed from 787k to 1.15mm. That’s still probably lower than what it should be; hoping Fritz will start taxing the rich their fair share in the coming years and ease the burden on the middle class. The assessed value of my property in Jefferson Park somehow went down 10% while others on my block went up 30%+. The system in place now makes zero sense.
From county sites, instead of the idiot realtor:
2017: $18,242.13
That amount in the listing is for the 2014 tax bill. The correct amount for the 2016 bill (which the listing claims) was $17,150.04
First pass reassessment has the AV at 115,072, up from 87,837, which in turn was up from the 80,412 that $14,486 tax bill was based on.
“ease the burden on the middle class”
If by middle class, you mean the owners of homes that would struggle to hit $200k on the market, then you are likely to get your wish.
If by middle class you mean $500k homes, you talking about homeowners who look like “the rich” to more than half of the city.
Started looking at the pics and was thinking, “man, this place is awesome, there’s gotta be some swords,” and then, alas, a pic with swords.
To the house:
Looks nicely done, but I hate basically every room in the house. Outside space is nice, but waaaaaaay too much gator deck.
Basement seems to have a low ceiling. Need a replacement to the initial on the stained glass at closing, unless your name also starts with A.
As to future taxes, I would expect that the 2018 (pay 19) taxes will be around $25k plus whatever %age increase in the levy.
Unless the Aggregate AV goes down for the city (or, less so, county ex city), due to downward re-assessed values on the west and south side, in which case it will be still more.
speaking of…
“Alternate High School: LANE TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL”
hahahahahaha!
At least they didn’t claim Northside, which is much closer.
“Alternate College: Harvard University”
ok, one more thing:
is that a private alley? looks to be gravel, and only serve the first four houses.
You can tell the comments from the prior thread were made in the few days preceding the 2016 election. It’s just a reflection of the continued incivility that’s been plaguing America since that time. I admit that I contributed to that incivility. I have actually taken a step back from all that and have gone apolitical which included taking a break from this site as the vitriol here got way out of hand. But I’m back now and I promise to focus exclusively on real estate. Sorry southbound!!!
But back to the property, I think the fundamental problem with the property is the style. All the other problems (price, layout, fixtures) all stem from that. The style of this house isn’t just inconsistent, it’s more akin to a total mish-mash of styles.
For example, the exterior is an English manor home – think Downton Abby-esque (https://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2015-11-19/10-best-english-manor-estates). Yet the foyer has got these weird columns totally out of place, greek revival maybe? The sitting room (from my blurry pictures) looks like it’s got more greek revival around the fireplace with some sort of baroque chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The kitchen is contemporary enough but kind of bland except for the two different color cabinetry…the basement is a dungeon that would creep out any visitor.
The staircase and landing area looks like it belongs in a medieval castle complete with scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry on the wall and stained glass windows out of the Cambridge Library and the probably medieval era trunk. The bedrooms look like they were taken straight out of the cut scenes from 2015’s video Game of the Year “Witcher 3” (for those of you not familiar, the setting is medieval 12th century Poland).
The upstairs bathroom is unique in that it has not one, but two toilets right next to each other..unless it’s a bidet but I can’t tell if there is a seat up or not from the purposely obscured picture angle…the style of the bathroom itself is basically checked subway tile? The jack and jill bathroom is old granny contemporary again the baroque style. The pool (with cabana!) takes up the entire backyard and any patch of grass is covered in bricks. And then they chose to cover the bricks with ivy. So the only green damages the mortar of the bricks…not a good choice. The third car to the garage was an addition – and they took no efforts whatsoever to incorporate it into the existing garage structure, and then threw a gator deck for good measure. It’s like they didn’t want any yard whatsoever. Did they even run this through zoning at all?
The fact that it was a $925,000 purchase in 2005 of all years, with a $783,000 mortgage AND a $417,000 mortgage, means this was all part of the overall financial excess that was pervasive during the run up to the financial crash. Fortunately for these homeowners they were able to weather the storm but here were are 13 years later and they are still feeling the pain on a daily basis as they try to unload their poor design choices.
Let’s face it, this house is an abomination that destroyed the english country manor style it once was. The owners purposely destroyed a classical home with their mish-mash of Witcher 3/Greek Revival/Dungeon/Baroque/Moldovian style. This could be a $1.7 house if it kept the original englsih manor design and style. And they wrecked it.
Who is the target market for this home? I always though the neighborhood seemed to be govt administrator types. $1.7 seems to be a lot for the area.
I certainly can’t see the typical Greenzone finance bro who settled down saying, “Hey let’s move to Sauganaush and drop $1.7 on a place.”
The price seems absurd for what you can get in other areas…
This is my favorite white elephant in Oak Park… I think they started at $2.5 million… down to $1.7. 11,000 sqft. Full indoor basketball court! See pic 22. WTF?
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/638-N-Kenilworth-Ave_Oak-Park_IL_60302_M76582-24588?view=qv
I was wondering about the target market too, seems wrong for the area. I checked and there’s almost nothing else in the price range, but there is a $2 m planned new construction at Kirkwood just south of Devon (no photos, just plans).
I can’t disagree with anything homedelete says about it, but it’s so crazy that it’s fun compared to a huge number of places in the GZ at that price point. And I can’t help thinking of how very much I would have loved growing up in a place like that.
Regarding insane places, I really don’t understand this one, in Lincolnwood for $2 m: https://www.redfin.com/IL/Lincolnwood/6440-N-Longmeadow-Ave-60712/home/12796396 (It was one of the “similar listings” for the Sauganash place.) Indoor pool, dance floor, elevator, ridiculous double staircase and columns, disco bathroom, and yet something of an office building decor too!
It’s the residential version of Medieval Times
I was wondering about the target market too, seems wrong for the area.
It’as the Crib Chatter Paradox: the person who wants to live there, cannot/will not pay [This price] for a home and the person who can afford [This price] for a home doesn’t want to live there.
“my favorite white elephant in Oak Park”
Looks like that may be a distressed sale.
I just dont understand how there are so many million$ + homes everywhere. This used to be a nice middle class area, but by no means a million doller home area. I look at Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn too, tons of million $ + listings. i look at LA and little cap cods and bungalos are asking over a million. There simply can not be this many people in America making enough to actually afford million $ homes and the their taxes. Am I taking crazy pills because reality makes no sense to me anymore.
The taxes are easily explained, as anyone who read about reasonably current Chicago events will attest: The re-orientation of O’Hare Airport runways caused e-x-t-r-e-m-e increases in airplane fly-over noise. Berrios publically said, and posted, that he would reduce Sauganash (it’s North of Bucktown for the nonce) neighborhood property valuations.
So while you are all looking at style, etc., how about a discount for planes screaming in low over your heads literally every minute? How much you gonna pay now?
I have no idea where you live, sonies, nor do I care, but that is why you are paying more in property taxes than that “dickhead” (your word).
Knowledgeable about Chicago real estate, indeed.
“Berrios publically said, and posted, that he would reduce Sauganash”
So, but for that, the assessed value would have gone up by 50% or more, rather than just 31%?
“why you are paying more in property taxes”
I’ll bet you a dollar he’s paying less than the actual 2017 taxes on this property, and that comment was based on the FALSE taxes included in the Redfin listing.
That’s a BS explanation on the taxes, my place is in the flight path and got worse with the runway reconfiguration, and my taxes are way more than this guy’s for a property worth way less. If that is what happened it’s probably a cover story for the extension of tax break cronyism in that area, which is heavy with city affilliated types.
Anon (tfo) posted: “So, but for [plane noise screaming in low over your head 17 hours a day – making one’s home and outside areas UTTERLY unusabale) the assessed value would have gone up by 50% or more, rather than just 31%?”
Sing and dance all you want, sweet pea (that would be you, Anon (tfo) — how much are you going to pay for a house with such plane noise? Sounds to me like a shyster real estate agent is withholding information. Now for most of us, that would be claiming that Bucktown goes South of Armitage. Here, it is a real estate agent failing to disclose the increase in airport noise from planes S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G in low over rooftops literally a minute a day.
And you all wonder why I challenge you twits (hungry or not) when you say that Bucktown goes South of Armitage? If you ignore facts on the ground, how the Hell am I supposed to ignore self-interested border stretching? I shall, of course, refrain from using the term “dickheads” — that sonie’s territory.
Where you at Sid V? General road junctions will do. ‘Cuz Sauganash is screaming in there vis-a-vis plane noise.
If the O’Hare thing were a legitimate explanation for this place having $14K taxes, the place wouldn’t be listed at $1.7m. I mean, seriously, how does that even make sense? “Because you have to deal with O’Hare noise, I will tax you less than houses that have a significantly lower market value.”
One major part of the explanation is, as Elliot and anon(tfo) said, that the taxes on the listing are inaccurate. (And thanks for checking on that!) The other part is that taxes are inconsistent and unfair in many cases, which is why it was believable that the taxes on the listing were correct.
Stephanie “If the O’Hare thing were a legitimate explanation for this place having $14K taxes, the place wouldn’t be listed at $1.7m.”
Stephanie, if one can lie and ignore the boundaries of Bucktown, one can lie about anything.
I had a friend who noticed that a house in Maine on the Atlantic coast (early 1900s Summer place trying to pass itself off as a whaler captain’s house) (complete with widow’s walk, and no, none of you could have afforded it 35 years ago, let alone today) was only available for inspection at high tide, never at low tide. Why? because at low tide the place stank due to the marsh.
The REAL whalers’ captains homes were available for inspection any time — if they ever did, and they didn’t, it was all private sales.
So I bet that your Sauganash house is only available for inspection during bad weather, when flight noise is at a minimum.
It will be a cold day in Hades when a real estate agent can insist on a “legitimate explanation” about anything.
The low taxes are the result of the low assessed value: $878,370. Given the ridiculous sales price it sold for 2005 – $925,000 – the assessed value may still be too high. I think this is nowhere near a $1.7 home. Not even close. It’s probably still worth only only $925,000. I’d personally rip out 90% of the fixtures and sell them on ebay for pennies on the dollar of their original cost.
[Removed by Sabrina]
Of note, the assessor claims this house was rehabbed in 2002 – which means the previous did a rehab too. If I had to guess – the kitchen, one or two of the bathrooms and possibly the bedroom were rehabbed to give it that baroque old lady/grandma style. But I bet the pool, the 3rd garage, the gator decks, the dungeon, the medieval motif, the crazy bathrooms – that’s all the new owners. Which would makes a lot more sense to me than the current owner mashing up the two styles.
Regardless, it’s a gosh dang Frankenstein of an abomination of a home.
“So while you are all looking at style, etc., how about a discount for planes screaming in low over your heads literally every minute? How much you gonna pay now?”
It’s no secret that I moved from Park Ridge to Long Grove and back to Park Ridge. The plane noise has little effect on property values in Park Ridge which is right next to the airport. Few but the old timers seem to even care. The soaring complaints come from the same households who ruminate about the air port. Really, the airport committee meetings are all old crazy people complaining. New owners buy in the flight path all the time knowing they are in the flight path. And really, it’s not that big of a deal.
https://www.redfin.com/IL/Park-Ridge/512-S-Knight-Ave-60068/home/13641108
This house is a half a block off Belle Plaine Ave. It just sold for $1,185,000. 9L/27R is nick named ‘Belle Plaine Runway” because it runs parallel to belle plaine in Park Ridge.
For reference about the airport noise:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-ohare-noise-met-20150501-story.html
O’Hare noise complaints skyrocket — many from the same addresses
A campaign by O’Hare jet noise critics reached epic proportions in March when almost 353,000 noise complaints were filed with the city of Chicago.
The dramatic increase pushed the total number of complaints to more than a half million in the first quarter of 2015, according to a new city report submitted to the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission on Friday.
The March numbers — 352,846 complaints — dwarfed the 11,145 complaints received in March 2014 and the 268,211 total complaints during the 12 months of last year, the Chicago Department of Aviation reported to the commission.
The city noted that 99.8 percent of the March complaints were made via the Internet, and that 37 percent of them came from only eight addresses. A further breakdown showed a concerted effort by a small band of serial complainants:
• 77,136 of the 102,310 complaints in Bensenville came from one address.
• Three Chicago addresses were the source of 15,970 of 147,429 complaints filed in the city. And 22,688 of the 23,490 complainants in Chicago did not identify themselves in their complaints online or to a telephone hot line.
• In Norridge, 18,901 of 20,779 complaints came from two addresses.
• The occupants of two addresses in Wood Dale filed 18,915 of 35,537 complaints from the village.
Reminder:
We have a rule to never name or target the owners of properties unless the homeowner is a known celebrity, although Chance didn’t take kindly to Crain’s reporting on where he recently bought his new home and said so in one of his new songs (!).
That includes hypothesizing on why they bought a home, how long they were intending to live there, or reasons for selling.
Remember the homeowner who freaked out when you all started talking about her child (whose name was in big letters on the wall above the crib)?
Yeah- let’s stay away from that stuff.
I’m in Lincoln Sq/NC a little south of one of the major runways that runs E/W near Lawrence, east of Western. The planes aren’t unbearable but very noticeable.
Airplane noise? Hmmm…
Last year I helped a family buy a ranch house in DesPlaines which was under a flight path. Lots of noise outside ..pin-drop quiet inside. Because the previous owner was provided with new sound-proof windows paid for with public funds.
If the good citizens of DesPlaines and other suburbs were gifted this way, why not people on the nir northwest side of Chicago?
“how much are you going to pay for a house with such plane noise?”
Strawman, DB (that would be you, DB)–I never addressed the market value of the home, just your assertion about the revised assessed value.
HomeDelete – Welcome back. Always like your opinions and perspective.
My sister and her family live fairly close to this place. They too have reasonable taxes in comparison to the land and house value. We live in PR and are even closer to the airport. Fortunately the flight path rarely crosses over our house. Only one obscure runway truly annoys me but its part of life. If plane noise, busy streets, trains and el tracks, sirens, car alarms or any other noises annoy you then move to Inverness. Or out of the state to Wisconsin. We can hear a pin drop when we are up at the lake. Oh, and the occasional group of Harley riders.
Taxes should not have been adjusted due to the expansion of O’Hare. Buyer beware as you bought in close proximity to an airport. What the heck did you think was going to happen.
Sabrina on August 2nd, 2018 at 9:50 pm
“Remember the homeowner who freaked out when you all started talking about her child (whose name was in big letters on the wall above the crib)?”
I would LOVE to see the thread where this happened.
“That includes hypothesizing on why they bought a home, how long they were intending to live there, or reasons for selling.”
It’s your blog of course, Sabrina, your rules. I admit I am guilty of doing this myself (though never naming the individual) because it’s kind of fun to speculate and — in the case of this property — see what kind of job/business the owner had to be able to afford and remodel such a property. I blame homedelete on introducing me to the recorder of deeds website years ago lol.
A friend of mine told me he (supposedly) leveraged a lower deal on a condo he bought in 2012 when he found some information about the owner through some basic digging online. Some would call it stalking but is it stalking if it’s all public info? He traced the owner’s employment back to a business and found out through that business’ facebook page that they were shutting down, putting the seller in an obviously weaker position. This sort of information can be incredibly powerful in the right hands, though discussing it or the owner’s life to such a degree on a real estate blog can seen as disrespectful. Talking about their children is definitely overstepping the line too even if the owner was opening herself up to that by buying into that stupid typography-on-wall trend.
“If the good citizens of DesPlaines and other suburbs were gifted this way, why not people on the nir northwest side of Chicago?”
They are, or at least have been starting to after the re-configuration of runways. Chicago’s been doing soundproofing for suburbs around O’Hare, and city areas around Midway for many years. New soundproofing programs are/will be started up as a result of O’Hare reconfiguration. In the meantime:
a. houses are miserable inside until soundproofed, which can take years to work through the number of houses to be done;
b. your outside area (lawn, garden, etc.) is utterly unusable in any event. Given that people buying single family homes usually buy in order to have a yard for the children, etc., that’s a huge disadvantage. Almost a totally different mind set from apartment (condo) dwellers — and even many condo owners want decks. How many condo owners would want a deck that’s unusable because of noise? and;
c. the general neighborhood is an ordeal to live in. Walking to the bus stop, taking an evening stroll, talking to the neighbors — everything outside — runs a gauntlet of noise with planes coming in low blasting you with noise.
So yes, Chicago will ultimately soundproof homes at some future date, but the value of Sauganash homes and similar areas is severely crippled.
This location is going to get a lot noisier in a couple of years. Right now, this location is not getting directly overheard airplane traffic, but it soon will.
The new O’Hare 27C – “Granville” runway (6100-6200 N) will be complete in less than two years, 2020. It’s going to be 11,000 feet, which is intended to handle the “heavies”, the biggest airplanes in the sky.
“Remember the homeowner who freaked out when you all started talking about her child (whose name was in big letters on the wall above the crib)?”
“I would LOVE to see the thread where this happened.”
It was 7 or 8 years ago now. The property was in Lakeview.
I can’t remember if I ended up removing the post, as the owners asked me to do so because they were freaked out people were talking about their child. They were literally scared for their child’s safety.
It WAS creepy.
Back then, having the child’s name above the crib in those big block letters were “in.” I only rarely see it now (although it sometimes is still there) so I feel that maybe it has gone “out” of style again. Or perhaps some sellers are removing the child’s name before taking the listing pictures.
But that whole episode was a reminder that the pictures you put on a real estate listing CAN tell the world a lot about your personal life. And most sellers don’t really think about how it all goes out to the public, and the internet, basically…forever.
For most sellers, they don’t care if the world sees their couch, but when it comes to personal pictures or your child’s name in big letters on the wall in the picture, then you might want to be more careful.
The new O’Hare 27C – “Granville” runway (6100-6200 N) will be complete in less than two years, 2020. It’s going to be 11,000 feet, which is intended to handle the “heavies”, the biggest airplanes in the sky
That runway appears to be headed right down some street between Devon and Peterson. I suspect that it would become a bit of a nuisance for Sauganash however the real hit comes to Park Ridge. In that area somewhere adjacent to the south park and Mary Seat of Wisdom blocks. That could be ugly.
We are north of 27 and the noise is not that bad. The other e/w runway goes mostly over the Kennedy. If you are right under it by Maine South I’d guess that it can be a hassle.