Trump Tower Condo Sells for $9.4 Million

The 88th-floor condo at the Trump International Hotel & Tower where television host Steve Harvey lived as a renter for five years sold yesterday for $7.7 million.

 

The 5,500-square-foot unit went for $1,400 a square foot, the highest any unit in the building has gone for, according to Chezi Rafaeli, the Coldwell Banker agent who represented seller Waltraud Legat. Legat, an investor who lives in Florida, bought the condo for $3.7 million in 2009 from the Trump entity that developed the building.

 

Rafaeli said Legat bought the unit as finished by the developer, while most buyers of the larger units upgraded with their own higher-priced finishes. He said he believes the buyers of the 88th-floor unit plans renovations that could add multiple millions to the cost of the condo.

 

The buyers are not yet identified in public records.

 

The purchase price is the fifth-highest price for a Chicago-area home so far in 2018, coming in below two condominiums on Walton Street and two properties in Winnetka. By this time last year, there had been one upper-bracket sale, a Lincoln Park home that went for $7.2 million.

 

At $1,400 afoot, the Trump condo is close to two times the average paid for condos in the building in 2017. Crain's reported in January that the average was $747 a foot, down from $846 a year earlier.

 

The condo, which occupies half the tower's 88th floor, has 16-foot ceilings and three fireplaces, according to Rafaeli's listing.

 

Steve Harvey rented the unit from 2012 until 2017, while filming his syndicated "Steve Harvey Show" in Chicago. Production of the show shifted to Los Angeles in May. While the asking rent before Harvey moved in was $22,000 a month, both Rafaeli and Legat have in the past declined to specify for Crain's what Harvey was paying.

 

Legat listed the condo for sale or rent in April. For sale, the asking price was $9.5 million, and for rent, it was $25,000 a month. The asking price did not come down before the condo went under contract on Jan. 18.

 

The sale closed yesterday at 81 percent of the asking price.

 

An 87th-floor unit in the building with an asking price of almost $10 million, cut from the original September 2016 asking price of $12.7 million, has been under contract to a seller since December. Neither agent attached to the deal has disclosed the price it well sell at.