Channel 5 weather forecaster Andy Avalos and his wife have sold their Hinsdale-area home, which a local real estate ad had called “a stunning, sprawling estate,” for $730,000, according to public records.
Avalos, 41, recently gave up weather reports on WMAQ-TV’s 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts to spend more time with his family and to make way for newcomer Shelly Monahan. He now delivers the weather on the 4 and 5 p.m. news, Monday through Thursday. Before being hired by NBC-5 in 1994, Avalos worked for 10 years for WLS-Channel 7 as a weekend weatherman.
Avalos’ home sale and his recent move to Naperville are merely the latest in a flurry of buying and selling activity for the forecaster. In August 1995, he and his wife, Anna, sold their home in Naperville’s Aero Estates subdivision, where homeowners have access to an aircraft landing strip, for $336,000.
That same summer, Avalos paid about $680,000 to purchase the 12-room, 4-bedroom home in the Garfield Ridge subdivision of west suburban Willowbrook, just outside Hinsdale’s borders. The “sophisticated hillside ranch” features a “professionally landscaped double lot, a luxurious first-floor master suite, a nanny/in-law arrangement and a three-car garage,” according to promotional material published last year by a Coldwell Banker listing agent.
The Avaloses placed that home on the market last July for $749,000. The buyers were a couple from Hinsdale.
Speaking of former Channel 7 weather forecasters, WBBM-Channel 2 weatherman Steve Deshler, who left the ABC affiliate at the same time that Avalos did, has paid $227,500 for a condominium in the River Bank Lofts development in the River West section of Chicago.
Deshler worked for WLS-TV for 14 years, but his contract wasn’t renewed at the end of 1993. He moved to Phoenix, where he worked at a local station there. He returned to Chicago last summer after Channel 2 offered him a four-year deal to become a weekend weatherman and fill-in forecaster.
After he left Chicago in 1994, Deshler and his ex-wife, Channel 7 reporter Janet Davies, sold their Gold Coast home on East Bellevue Place for $810,000, according to public records. Deshler then bought a single-family house in Cave Creek, Ariz., that same year for $219,000. Last summer, in anticipation of his return to Chicago, Deshler sold that same home for just $1,000 more, according to public records.
Deshler most recently had been renting on the Gold Coast.
– Lost in all the media attention over former Bears coach Mike Ditka’s Bannockburn home–which originally was listed last year for $1.7 million but heavily hyped after he reduced its price by just $50,000–was the home’s final selling price.
Ditka, now coach of the New Orleans Saints, sold the gated home in the Dunsinane Woods area to a couple from Lincolnshire for $1.45 million, according to public records.
Such a disparity between listing and selling price is hardly uncommon, but it seemed to reflect Ditka’s temperament–and stubbornness–that he stuck with his selling price for as long as he did.
– Around the U.S.: What kind of housewarming parties have you ever thrown? Florida Marlins slugger Gary Sheffield, who at more than $10 million a year is one of the highest-paid players in baseball, topped most of us recently by inviting 500 people to help break in his new St. Petersburg bay front mansion. It took him two years and $2.8 million to build the 15,000-square-foot monstrosity, which sits on a three-acre lot he bought for $600,000. He raised no shortage of controversy by clear-cutting dozens of trees on the property, a la Lake Forest’s own Mr. T, and submitting a dock plan that had to be revised to meet local approval. The property is easy to find, because it has two-foot-high, gold-plated initials “G.S.” on the front gate.
The party was a huge hit, though, judging by the roughly 1,200 people who showed up. Although no Cubs or Sox players were in attendance, other big-leaguers like Fred McGriff, Dave Justice, Eric Davis, Marquis Grissom, Reggie Sanders and Sheffield’s own uncle, Dwight Gooden, made appearances, as did musicians Salt ‘n Pepa and supermodel Tyra Banks. Sheffield reportedly paid to fly in many celebrities, all at a cost to himself of about $100,000.
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Have a tip about a home sale or a property being put on the market that involves a well-known Chicagoan or a well-known piece of Chicago real estate? Write to Upper Bracket, c/o Chicago Tribune, Real Estate section, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. E-mail rgoldsbo@enteract.com
