Long-retired Chicago Bulls basketball star and NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan has finally inked a deal to sell his massive mansion on 8.4 acres in Highland Park, Illinois, which has been on the market for more than a dozen years and which has a current asking price of $14.855 million.
Whether the deal closes — and for what price — remains to be seen, along with who the buyer would be. But the contemporary-style mansion, which Jordan had custom-built in the 1990s with then-wife Juanita Vanoy Jordan, has languished at its current price for more than nine years. From 2012 until 2013, Jordan sought $29 million for it, before chopping its asking price to $21 million in early 2013 and then to $16 million at the end of 2013. He tried a late 2013 auction with a $13 million reserve price that was not a success, which revealed that no buyer anywhere was willing to pay $13 million for it.
Jordan’s final price cut in 2015 — to $14.855 million — was a number chosen, his listing agent has said, because the digits add up to his playing-career uniform number of 23.
Listing agent Katherine Malkin did not respond to a request for comment on the news, which was first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business. However, she told Elite Street in 2022 that “we actually have quite a bit of (buyer) interest in it right now.” While no deal was struck — in 2022 or 2023 — His Airness now appears to have a buyer who, at least preliminarily, has signed on the dotted line.
Built in 1995, the mansion has 15 full bathrooms, four half bathrooms, a regulation-sized basketball gymnasium, a circular infinity pool and a cigar room. The home’s size is in question — Malkin bills it as having 56,000 square feet, while Lake County’s assessor counts its size at 32,683 square feet. It adjoins a forest preserve.
No matter what, a buyer likely will pay a hefty property tax bill. Lake County records show that the estate had a $137,208 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.
In addition, the Lake County assessor assigns a $4.94 million value to Jordan’s property.
From a practical standpoint, that means that if a buyer pays, for example, $10 million for the estate, that buyer can expect the current level of annual property taxes to double.
Jordan owns a five-bedroom, 9,100-square-foot mansion in Jupiter, Florida, that he bought in March for $17 million. He also owns a 26,299-square-foot mansion in Jupiter that he bought for $5.3 million in 2015. And Jordan paid $3.148 million in 2010 for two top-floor penthouses in a condominium building in downtown Charlotte, N.C. On top of all that, he owns a six-bedroom, 12,310-square-foot mansion in Cornelius, N.C., which he bought in 2013 for $2.8 million.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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