Builder puts own Palos Park residence on auction block
By Mike Nolan mnolan@southtownstar.com July 25, 2012 8:42PM
Frank Diliberto shows the former home of well-know local builder David DePaulo in Palos Park Tuesday July 24, 2012. Diliberto Real Estate Services will auction the home on August 31, 2012. | Brett Roseman~Sun-Times Media
Auction info
Diliberto Real Estate Services in Orland Park is handling the Aug. 31 auction of the home. For information, call (708) 460-2437 or visit www.realestateauctionsinc.com.
Article Extras
Updated: August 27, 2012 10:56AM
The brochure for an upcoming auction of a Southland builder’s own sprawling home in Palos Park calls it the “opportunity to name your price.”
With 11 rooms spread over 6,000 square feet, sitting on a heavily wooded lot overlooking Azure Lake, the former residence of David DePaulo is likely among the Southland’s largest homes and hardly within the price range of a first-time buyer.
But what it might sell for is really anybody’s guess, and won’t be determined until the gavel falls on Aug. 31, the day bidders will gather inside the home at 10749 Cherrywood Drive.
The Orland Park firm, Diliberto Real Estate Services, hired to organize the auction has used the process to sell hundreds of new homes and homesites on behalf of builders in the south and southwest suburbs. The auction process helps “accelerate” a sale by allowing the owner to avoid multiple showings and shorten carrying costs, such as property taxes, Frank Diliberto, the firm’s president, said.
Built in 2003, the home boasts high-end fixtures, three decks, a boat dock and walkout basement. There’s a butler’s bar off the kitchen and Brazilian cherry wood flooring in the dining room. Diliberto said DePaulo and his wife are downsizing.
Before hiring the firm earlier this month, DePaulo tried to sell the home on his own, Diliberto said. Ads for the auction indicate the home’s asking price was previously set at as much as $1.8 million.
But that was then, and this is now.
Before the recession started pummeling home prices, it was easier to figure out property values, as the ceiling on prices kept rising. Now, some buyers are unsure whether prices have a floor.
The auction will “let the buyer determine what it’s worth,” Diliberto said during a tour of the home. “Value is a function of the demand.”
The company has open houses scheduled for Aug. 5 and Aug. 12, and Diliberto said the company might set a minimum bid for the property, something that is common for real estate auctions.
