WGN-Channel 9 anchor and reporter Dina Bair and her husband have paid $1.026 million for a newly built, single-family house in Winnetka.
A 1989 graduate of Northwestern University, Bair, who joined Channel 9 in 1994, had previously worked at CLTV and as a reporter and anchor at WHOI-TV in Peoria.
The two-story, traditional-styled house’s pre-construction price was $920,000, according to listing information. However, enhancements drove the price up, said listing agent James Diamond.
The preconstruction deal, with builder Greystone Builders, was agreed to in 1999, Diamond said, but the closing on the four-bedroom home did not occur until this year.
The place in Winnetka is Bair and her husband’s third home in the last six years. In late 1994, they sold a single-family house in the Brookstone neighborhood of west suburban Carol Stream for $156,000 at the same time that they paid $415,000 for a single-family house in Wilmette.
The place in Wilmette appreciated considerably, and Bair and her husband sold it in February to a couple from Florida for $655,000.
Diamond was affiliated with Coldwell Banker last year when the pre-construction deal was first listed, but he now is a builder. He and Susan Wyle Schreiber were the co-listing agents.
Big house, big price
A more than 13,000-square-foot mansion in Highland Park is under construction, with a listing price of $5.995 million. The eight-bedroom house at 30 Riparian Way is slated to have nine full baths and two half baths.
The home’s features will include a more than $100,000 gourmet kitchen, a workout room, wine cellar, walk-out lower level and terrace. As befits a house located on a street called Riparian Way, there is direct beach access from a set of stairs on the property.
Work is expected to be completed on the mansion in early 2001. Frances Coulter of Coldwell Banker’s Highland Park office is the listing agent.
Another home for O.J.
Around the U.S.: O.J. Simpson has just purchased a $625,000 single-family house in the Kendall area of Miami, paving the way for the former football great to move into his sixth residence in the last two years.
Simpson, who told a local newspaper that he lives on a monthly pension of about $20,000, apparently is taking advantage of a legal loophole in Florida, which protects homes, no matter how large, from creditors.
After a Los Angeles County criminal jury found Simpson not guilty in the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, he was later found liable for the slayings in a civil court action and ordered to pay a $33.5 million judgment to the Goldman family.
Since Simpson’s move two years ago out of his multimillion-dollar home in L.A.’s Brentwood neighborhood, where the slayings took place, he has relocated, in succession, to a rental house in the Bel Air area of L.A., a Los Angeles hotel, a condominium in Brentwood and, in August, to the Mayfair Hotel in Miami.
Now, the Hall of Famer has bought a 4,343-square-foot, 47-year-old house, at 9450 W. 112th St. in Miami. Although the sale price has not yet been disclosed, it was originally listed on the real estate market for $625,000.
The recently renovated, five-bedroom, four-bath home, sits on a 1.65-acre parcel that is landscaped with hibiscus, birds of paradise, palm trees and cacti.
Features of the home include a multilevel deck, stone columns, a 1,000-square-foot pool, and a two-bedroom guest house with “low popcorn ceilings and bluish-gray plush carpet,” according to news accounts.
The typically blunt-speaking Simpson, in an article, labeled the property as “too small,” and said that compared to some of the other places in which he has lived, “this place has a lot of shortcomings.”
However, he also noted that “compared to L.A., real estate here is a super buy.”
Simpson already has gotten himself into legal troubles in his new locale. On Sept. 22, his ex-girlfriend reported that Simpson had burglarized her apartment, but she later decided not to press charges.
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Have a tip about a home sale or a piece of property being put on the market that involved 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, IL 60611. Or you may e-mail him at rgoldsbo@enteract.com
