Published October 2026, by Courtney Poulos
5153 Irvington takes me back to a very different Highland Park.
The house was acquired as a bank sale for around $280,000.
I distinctly remember negotiating with the bank over two or three thousand dollars.
We were so close to not making the deal happen over a few thousand dollars.
Today, that sounds almost absurd.
At the time, it absolutely wasn't.
This Was Where I Learned the Renovation-Resale Business
5153 Irvington became one of my first resales for Better Shelter, which eventually represented a significant portion of my business.
Those projects were where I really learned renovation resale.
And I deliberately use that phrase instead of "flip."
There are flips where the objective is simply to spend as little as possible, make the house photograph well and get out.
Then there are renovations where someone actually thinks about how the buyer is going to live.
Those aren't the same product.
Buyers notice.
The property eventually sold for approximately $530,000, and at the time that represented a healthy outcome for an investor/developer.
Fast forward a few years to how I implemented renovation-resale elsewhere in Highland Park.
Why Those Numbers Don't Work the Same Way Today
Whenever somebody tells me about the enormous spread they expect to make renovating a Highland Park house today, I think about properties like Irvington.
The economics have changed.
Acquisition costs changed.
Labor changed.
Materials changed.
Financing changed.
Buyer expectations changed.
The sophistication of the competition changed.
You can't take a formula that worked in an earlier Highland Park market and simply increase all the numbers.
Today, the margin has to survive a much more expensive process.
Good Renovation Starts With the Eventual Buyer
One of the most important things I learned working with renovation artists is that the resale strategy shouldn't begin when construction ends.
It should begin before construction starts.
Who is the eventual buyer?
What does that person value?
Which improvements are going to change how the property lives?
Where should we spend money?
Where are we spending money purely because the developer likes something?
Those questions can have very different answers.
I've seen expensive decisions add surprisingly little value and relatively inexpensive decisions completely change a buyer's reaction to a house.
That's where brokerage and design start overlapping.
Highland Park Buyers Got More Sophisticated
As Highland Park evolved, buyers became more sophisticated too.
They're exposed to good design constantly. They know what thoughtful landscaping looks like. They understand indoor-outdoor flow. They notice hardware, lighting, tile, cabinetry and whether materials make sense together.
That makes it harder to hide a bad renovation behind staging and photography.
And that's a good thing.
Is Renovating a Highland Park Home Still Profitable?
It can be.
But I wouldn't buy a renovation project based on a simplistic purchase-price-plus-construction-cost equation.
I'd want to understand the specific street, likely resale buyer, realistic construction budget, carrying costs and what comparable finished properties have actually demonstrated.
The lesson of 5153 Irvington isn't that Highland Park used to be cheap.
We already know that.
The lesson is that every real estate strategy belongs to a particular market cycle.
If you're going to renovate in today's market, you need today's strategy.
15 years of selling homes in Highland Park
Considering a Highland Park renovation or resale? I work with buyers, sellers and renovation artists on the real estate strategy before, during and after the project.
