The corner lot is lined on two sides, Hyde Park Boulevard and Greenwood Avenue, with trees. The Obama house is off the right edge of the photo. 

A once-controversial empty lot next door to the Obamas’ Kenwood home sold quietly in December, and it’s likely the buyers will build a house on the site.

The corner lot, which until 17 years ago was under the same ownership as the Obama house, sold in December for $699,000 but only recently surfaced on Chicago Cityscape, a property and permits database. 

The buyers, according to the Cook County clerk, are Maurice and Robyn-Ashley Taylor. The Taylors have not responded to phoned and emailed requests for comment.

The Taylors do not appear to have filed any building permits or plans yet for the 7,500-square-foot site, where previous owners reportedly planned to build a house of about 8,000 square feet. 

This is the lot that gained some infamy after the Chicago Tribune reported in 2006 that political influencer Tony Rezko and his wife bought it on the same day in 2005 that then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama bought the house next door.

The Obamas’ house is a six-bedroom, roughly 3,700-square-foot house built in 1916 on Greenwood Avenue. Its lot was about 15,500 square feet, approximately the size of five standard Chicago lots, until it went on the market in 2005 as two separate parcels, the northern one containing the house and the southern one unbuilt.

According to the Tribune’s 2006 report, “Obama said his family's real estate broker brought the house to his wife's attention. He said he discussed the house with Rezko but isn't sure how Rezko began pursuing the adjacent lot. But Obama raised the possibility that he was the first to bring the lot to Rezko's attention.” 

The Obamas bought the northern portion, including the house, for $1.65 million in June 2005. At the same time, Rita Rezko paid $625,000 for the southern portion.

“My understanding was that (Rezko) was going to develop it,” Obama told the Tribune in 2006.

The Obamas later bought one-sixth of the Rezko lot, 1,500 square feet along the property line, for $104,500, and Rezko footed the $14,000 cost of building a fence between the properties, the Tribune reported. 

Detractors of Barack Obama believed the transactions showed that Obama was more closely allied with Rezko than he let on. In 2008, Rezko, who had been a fundraiser for Obama and other politicians, was found guilty of 16 counts of fraud, money laundering and bribery. Obama was not implicated.

Rita Rezko sold the lot, in its reduced size, in December 2006 for $575,000. With the $104,500 from the Obamas, her proceeds totaled $679,000, a profit of $54,000.

That buyer sold the lot in March 2008 for $675,000 to John and Marjorie Poulos, who planned to build an 8,000-square-foot home on the site. 

About 18 months after buying the lot, the couple listed it at $1.3 million. It was on and off the market a few times over subsequent years, coming down to an asking price of $699,000 in March 2019. 

At the $699,000 sale price after owning it for 13 years, the sellers made $24,000, or about 3.5%, not counting their carrying costs. This low profit is one sign the Taylors did not buy the site as an investment but to build on it. Maurice Taylor is in finance, and Robyn-Ashley Taylor is an attorney. 

The property was not actively listed at the time of the sale. Carlos Sanchez, the Bloom/Sanchez Realty agent who represented the lot in 2019, told Crain’s the owners sold the lot on their own in December. Crain’s could not reach John or Marjorie Poulos. 

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