Homer Glen-based home rehabber Pawel Radzik paid $66,000 last year for the modest, three-bedroom ranch-style brick house on 141st Place, and he gave it a major overhaul, saying last week that “80% of it is new — new flooring, new cabinets, new plumbing, new electrical, new kitchen.” He then listed the home in January for $219,000 before cutting his asking price to $205,000 later that month and then to $199,900 in February…
Upon the naming of the pontiff, Radzik immediately pulled the house from the market and told Elite Street at the time that he was looking into “what is the best option for me,” regarding the home, given its newly discovered provenance and heightened prominence.
Now, Radzik and his listing agent, Steve Budzik of iCandyRealty, have teamed up with auction house Paramount, with a June 18 auction date. The house has a reserve price of $250,000, meaning that Radzik has the right to reject any offers below that amount…
What a new owner would do with the home is unclear — perhaps turning it into a shrine to the new pope, or alternately restoring it to how it might have looked when the pontiff was a boy. No one disputes that the house has no real equal, as Prevost is the first American ever to become pope, and the 141st Place house is the only home Prevost ever lived in while growing up.
Three things strike me from this news:
The house looks like a typical postwar suburban house in the Chicago area: modest in size by today’s standards and was in need of overhauling. And the community it is in has changed.
This house is famous because of someone who once lived there. What happens to such suburban houses? There must be many such houses in the American suburbs – even though no other ones can claim to be the home to such a religious leader – given the number of Americans who have lived in suburbs over the decades.
The increase in value is striking. Even before the announcement about the Pope, the home went from a purchase price of $66,000 last year to a sales price around $200,000 this year to a set minimum of $250,000 later this year. That a significant appreciation in housing value. Does this end up as a successful house flipping project?
I will be curious to see what the home sells for as it combines an aging yet rehabbed and more valuable home in the suburbs connected to a famous religious leader.
Legally Sociable 