Dist. 203 Basswood Drive home sells in less than two months

For more than a month, the completely renovated home at 212 Basswood in Naperville sat on the auction block without a bidder. Yet within a day of hitting the market, it had a buyer.

Naperville Unit District 203 Monday approved a contract with Chicago bankruptcy and immigration attorney Chad Hayward for Hayward to purchase the five bedroom, four-bath home for $580,000.

“I didn’t know it was being auctioned,” Hayward said Monday. “I think I saw the MLS listing the day or day after it was posted and it was what I was looking for.”

With four kids, Hayward, said he was searching for a five-bedroom house that would allow his family to stay in Naperville, where they have been renting a home.

The house, purchased by the district in 2009, is the last to be built or renovated by the district’s former building trades program.

Several dozen students from Naperville North and Naperville Central high schools have been remodeling the home since October 2009. They completed the renovations this summer.

“It was a complete renovation of a house there on Basswood. They stripped it down to the studs to redo a lot of the work on the inside,” Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Tim Wierenga said when the project completed. “We like for the students to look at the entire process of construction so they were able to do everything from flooring to Sheetrock to plumbing.”

Students would work in daily two-hour shifts and be bused to and from the home in the West Highlands neighborhood, south of downtown Naperville.

“We really like the high ceilings and the open floor plan,” Hayward said. “The kids did a great job.”

The closing is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 18.

Earlier this summer, Superintendent Mark Mitrovich purchased a previous building trades home for a bid of $550,000.