The estate of the late philanthropist Nancy Hughes — the widow of filmmaker John Hughes — on Thursday sold her five-bedroom mansion on more than 5 acres on Lake Michigan in Lake Forest for $12.92 million, which is a record residential sale price for that northern suburb.
Nancy Hughes died at age 68 in 2019, a decade after her critically acclaimed filmmaker husband, who was behind many iconic films shot in the Chicago area, died suddenly at age 59.
In early 2018, Nancy Hughes paid $12 million through her Vista Del Lago LLC Delaware limited liability company for the Mayflower Road mansion in Lake Forest, which was built in 2009. The stone mansion has a slate roof, six full bathrooms, four half bathrooms, a first-floor primary bedroom suite, a second-floor screened porch, a second-floor billiard room, two laundry rooms with custom cabinetry, and a full basement with a large recreation room and radiant heat flooring throughout.
Outside on the fenced and gated estate are a protected beach, a new four-person tram to the beach, a stone staircase, a loggia with radiant heat under the stone and a pool house with a living room and full kitchen.
Hughes’ heirs listed the 11,846-square-foot mansion in March in real estate agents’ private listing network for $15 million and never budged on the asking price, including after listing it publicly in August. It went under contract a week after it was publicly listed.
Listing agent Ann Lyon did not respond to a request for comment.
The mansion had a $126,126 tax bill in the 2020 tax year. It easily had been Lake Forest’s highest-priced listing — now, the highest-priced public listing in Lake Forest is a seven-bedroom, 15,000-square-foot mansion on Green Bay Road that is available for $10.1 million.
Public records do not yet identify the buyer of the Hughes mansion.
With the Hughes estate sale, at least nine Chicago-area homes now have sold for $10 million or more in 2022. Other than the Hughes estate sale, the other eight sales have been for amounts ranging from $10 million to $20.56 million, and they have been sales of mansions in Winnetka and Lincoln Park and of condominiums in high-rises in downtown Chicago.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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