12/03/2025
A foreclosure sale that might have handed a run-down Frank Lloyd Wright house to a savior this week instead handed it to the lender, meaning the house will likely continue its years-long decline for at least a while longer.
The Florida-based mortgage holder on the J.J. Walser house on Central Avenue in Austin made the only bid in the auction, at $240,000, which was considerably more than either of two possible rescuers was prepared to offer. Without bids from those two — an Austin community revitalization group and an apartment-portfolio owner who is rehabbing two other endangered properties in the city — the lender received title to the property.
The lender, PHH Mortgage based in Palm Beach, has made no public statements about the property or plans to rehab it, and Crain’s could not reach any officials of the firm. Without one of the aspiring rescuers, Austin Coming Together or Andy Schcolnik’s Ansco Construction, becoming the new owner, prospects for a rehab of the 122-year-old Wright home do not appear imminent.
“The building is crying out for someone to come in and restore it and occupy it,” said Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. “Now the long saga (of the house) continues into another Chicago winter without someone living there and investing in it, and we all know what the freeze-thaw cycle in Chicago does to buildings.”
Read more here: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-real-estate/jj-walser-house-frank-lloyd-wright-auctioned-lender?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own
