Evanston Real Estate Market Heats Up Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

EVANSTON, IL — More Evanston homes were sold in 2020 than any year in over a decade, with two residential sales exceeding last year's top most expensive sale.

Sales of Evanston condos, townhomes and single-family residences have been so hot the median sales price surpassed the median listing price for the final five months of the year.

By December 2020, the median closing price reached $450,000, according to Realtor.com listing data, more than 23 percent above the price tag of the median listing.

Properties in Evanston have also been selling faster since the start of the pandemic, with the median days spent on the market declined from a 2020 peak of 111 days on the market in February to just 62 days on the market in December.

According to the North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors, more units were sold in Evanston in 2020 than in any year since 2004.

A total of 573 residential units in Evanston changed hands last year, up from 311 the prior year and twice the number sold in 2018. The mean average of sales prices in the city rose by more than $100,000 to $666,709, the highest level since 2007.

Realtors say buyers have been moving from Chicago — especially high-rises — to the north suburbs in search of more room and an increased sense of safety, according to North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors CEO Jeff Lasky.

"They want to have space between themselves and their neighbors. They want to have space to build their home theater. They want to have space to have their home office. Stuff like that, which was not an issue, a year ago," Lasky said.

As buyers and sellers shunned in-person visits, the pandemic accelerated ongoing trends toward online shopping for real estate, with livestreamed virtual tours and fully electronic document signing now commonplace.

"The necessity of doing the shopping by driving people around to 10, 12, 15 different places is long gone," Lasky said. "But you can even conduct the financing process, conduct the signing of closing documents, everything else, and take ownership of the home — without having to go somewhere to do it."

Lasky said a combination of high demand driven by low interest rates and a low supply of available homes has made for a highly competitive market across the North Shore.

"If you're going to go out there and sell your home and it's priced correctly, you're going to get a number of offers," he said. "You're going to get a lot of action quickly."

Most Expensive Sales

The most expensive home sold in Evanston in 2020 was a six-bedroom, 7,600-square-foot property built in 1929 by the renown Evanston architectural firm Mayo and Mayo and located on a 1-acre lot across the street from the Charles H. Dawes House in the Lakeshore Historic District.

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Sellers Daphne and John Cunningham purchased the property for $1.6 million in April 1998 and first listed it for sale in April 2019 with a nearly $4 million asking price. In April 2020, a trust that conceals the identity of its beneficiary purchased the property for $3.45 million.

According to the Cook County Assessor's Office, the property's estimated market value for taxing purposes was under $2.4 million. Its annual property tax bill was more than $44,000 last year.

As of January 2021, Evanston's priciest listing is a 1883 Queen Anne Victorian home that was "re-imagined" in the Tudor style by Mayo and Mayo in 1910.

It was purchased in 2012 by billionaire investor Jennifer Pritzker, restored by local firm Paul Janicki Architects and renovated to become Stone Terrace Bed & Breakfast. The restoration earned the local architect the city's highest preservation honor in 2016.

In April 2019, Pritzker's Tawani Enterprises listed the property for sale with a $5.2 million asking price. In March 2020, the price tag was reduced to $4.2 million where it has remained ever since.

Architect Ernest Mayo, designer of the Women's Club of Evanston and one half of the famed architectural duo, was also behind 2019's most expensive home sale — the $2.7 million purchase of a home on Sheridan Road.

The other top five home sales of 2020 in Evanston are the following:

Second most-expensive: A 1955-built lakefront home on a 0.3-acre lot near the Wilmette border at 2809 Lakeside Court with a private beach that was purchased for $3.158 million in April.

Third: A new construction, 7,800-square-foot home at 2650 Sheridan Road, across the road from Lighthouse Landing, that sold for $2.6 million in August.

Fourth: The historic bed and breakfast at 300 Church St., also formerly owned by Jennifer Pritzker's Tawani Enterprises, was purchased for $2.5 million in July, more than a year after it was first listed with a $4.2 million asking price.

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And fifth: the 1937-built lakefront home at 110 Burnham Place, across Lake Shore Boulevard from Burnham Shores Park, sold for $2.2 million in November.