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Lake Geneva home sells for $9.3M, despite not being for sale

Buyers made unsolicited offer that homeowner “could not refuse”

W3818 Lackey Lane and Melges Real Estate agent Bob McDarrah (
W3818 Lackey Lane and Melges Real Estate agent Bob McDarrah (Facebook/Bob McDarrah, Melges Real Estate Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Google Maps)

Some super high-end homes in Chicagoland sit on the market for years. But a Lake Geneva mansion just sold without even hitting the open market.

Buyers,whose identity have not been revealed, made an unsolicited offer and recently snagged the 4,700-square-foot, Colonial-style house at W3818 Lackey Lane for $9.3 million, marking the priciest mansion sale in Lake Geneva since October, Crain’s reported. 

The seller was Mark Licht, who co-owned the Chicago-based J.C. Licht paint retailer with his brother before selling its 21 stores to Benjamin Moore in 2000. Licht had no intention to sell his home, but it was “one of those offers we could not refuse,” he told the outlet. Bob McDarrah of Melges Real Estate represented the buyers.

The recent sale was the most expensive in Lake Geneva since last October, when the 12-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot home at W3415 Snake Road was bought for $17 million. The owners tore down that mansion earlier this year. 

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The Licht transaction also exemplifies the volatility of Chicagoland’s luxury residential market. In some cases, on the North Shore particularly, high-end homes might stay on the market for months or even years, forcing homeowners to undergo at least one price chop to fetch a buyer. But low housing inventory levels have led to bidding wars and minimal days on market for select properties.

Plus, in areas like Lake Geneva, specifically, where the second-home market is strong, deals are often closing well beyond initial asking prices due to a supply shortage. In other vacation-home areas, such as a 20-mile stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline from the Indiana state line to Bridgman, Michigan, home sales were down 34 percent last quarter to 71 deals from the same period in 2022.

The Lake Geneva house at W3818 Lackey Lane was built in 2008. Licht purchased it for $5.2 million in July 2020 through a land trust. Since the mansion was never actually for sale, details of the interior and other features weren’t publicly available.

— Quinn Donoghue 

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Melges Real EstateBob McDarrahMark Licht
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MansionSale