Might be time for a celebratory toss of the hat for a Minneapolis house with a famous facade.
After nearly five years on the market, the turreted house near Lake of the Isles that was depicted as Mary's home in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" is close to having a new owner.
The deal won't close until mid-September, so the identity of the buyers is a mystery and the listing agent declined to comment.
The house, at 2104 Kenwood Parkway, was built in 1892 and has gone through many renovations and expansions over its 125 years.
In the TV show, which aired from 1970 to 1977, it was depicted as broken into units for apartments. It's actually a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house that, in a remodeling before 2012, was expanded from 6,461 to 9,161 square feet.
Public records list the sellers as Gregory Macfarlane and Eva Wai Oi Mui, who paid $2.9 million for the house in 2007, when Macfarlane was appointed chief financial officer of Minneapolis-based Ceridian Corp.
It was put on the market for the same price in December 2012 after Macfarlane was named chief financial officer of H&R Block in Kansas City. Its most recent price was $1.7 million, about half the 2012 level.
The couple bought the house from Don and Patricia Gerlach, who bought it in 2005 for $1.1 million and completely renovated it, including making the kitchen four times larger.
The current estimated market value is $2.345 million, public records show. Property taxes are $42,435.
Upper-bracket houses can take several years to sell and, with comparable sales rare, pricing them is difficult.
After years of stagnancy, there are signs, however, that the luxury market is strengthening.
During June, buyers in the Twin Cities metro signed 619 purchase agreements for houses priced at $1 million or more, a 26 percent increase over last year, according to the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors.
On average, it took 192 days to find buyers for those homes, more than three times longer than the broader market.
Sellers of those upper-bracket houses have also become accustomed to offering steep discounts. During June, those listings sold for an average of 92.5 percent of list price compared with 98 percent for the broader market.
At the end of June, there were 695 houses priced at $1 million or more on the market — enough to last 13.5 months at the current sales pace compared with 2.5 months for all price ranges.
Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376
