Off-Market Mansion in Suburban Chicago Sells for $6.2 Million

Even in the North Shore’s priciest pockets, 2004 prices are hard to beat.

A Beaux-Arts-style mansion in Lake Forest sold for $6.2 million this week, Crain’s reported, trading for $200,000 less than what it last did in 2004 despite a pandemic-era surge in the suburb’s high-end housing market.

The roughly 7,000-square-foot home sits on 2.3 acres at 580 East Woodland Road, a few blocks from Lake Michigan in the ultra-affluent “VELF” pocket of Lake Forest, short for “Very East Lake Forest.” The sale price pencils out to about $885 per square foot.

Built in 2004 and originally priced at nearly $7.5 million, the home was purchased that year for $6.4 million.

The sellers owned the home through a trust and were represented by Marcia Rowley and Leslie Gleason of Coldwell Banker Realty. Mona Hellinga of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate represented the buyers, whose identities have not yet been disclosed in public records.

Listing records show the property changed hands again in 2015 for just $4.8 million during the market’s post-recession downturn.

The six-bedroom home features a symmetrical Beaux-Arts design, with a mansard roof, arched windows and doors and a long brick drive. The listing, which had just one interior photo, shows a curved staircase in the entryway and a backyard swimming pool surrounded by mature trees. The sale appears to have been handled privately, with no listing description or public market date posted.

The sale price fell short of its early-aughts valuation, but the transaction marked a rebound for Lake Forest. It’s only the third residential sale in the suburb to top $6 million since late 2023. The most recent was a $6.28 million neighbor-to-neighbor transfer on Mayflower Road in January; the other was a $7.75 million sale on Lake Road in November.

The latest transaction marked the 62nd home in the Chicago metro area to trade for $4 million or more this year, up from 37 by this time last year.

— Judah Duke