After more than 12 and a half years, long-retired Chicago Bulls basketball star and NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan on Tuesday finally sold his massive mansion on 8.4 acres in Highland Park for $9.5 million — well below his longstanding $14.855 million asking price.
The buyer is not yet identified in public records, and apparently was not represented by a real estate agent.
Jordan had held fast to that asking price for more than nine years, and his sale price demonstrates that a bit of flexibility with the amount he would accept might have served him better in terms of getting the mansion sold sooner. His Airness first listed it in 2012 — on Leap Day, no less — for $29 million, and he then cut his 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 that $13 million amount for it.
He made his final price cut to $14.855 million in 2015 — an unusual number chosen because the digits added up to his playing-career uniform number of 23. That 23 number also, for now at least, famously graces the gates outside the mansion.
Listing agent Katherine Malkin did not respond to a request for comment.
Buyers weren’t the only ones who didn’t think the mansion was worth $14.855 million. The Lake County Assessor assigns a value of $4.94 million to the estate. That means that the property’s $137,208 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year can be expected to double, very soon.
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 total square footage is up for debate — Malkin billed it as having 56,000 square feet, while Lake County’s assessor counts its size at 32,683 square feet.
Jordan owns a five-bedroom, 9,100-square-foot mansion in Jupiter, Fla. 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.
