A seven-bedroom Winnetka mansion that’s listed for $35 million and sits on 2.3 acres along Lake Michigan has found a buyer. If the 13,894-square-foot mansion sells for anything close to its asking price, it will become the highest priced home resale in Chicago-area history.
Retired investment banker Muneer Satter spent between $65 million and $72 million, according to the property’s listing agent, to create the 2.3-acre estate, which in addition to the 22-room vintage mansion also contains 223 feet of private beachfront. The home also has a double-door boathouse, a commercial-level boardwalk, a Lannon stone custom fountain, manicured hedges, a heated motor court for 10 cars, an infinity pool and a pergola. Satter paid $9.5 million in 2002 for the home, which was designed by the Mayo & Mayo architectural firm, and another $4.1 million in 2013 for the property next door, and set about improving the combined property.
In August, Satter listed the estate for sale. Now, according to updated real estate listing information, Satter has signed a contract with an unidentified buyer to sell it for a still-undisclosed price.
Listing agent Jena Radnay of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate could not be reached for comment on the change in status for the $35 million listing. However, in a conversation with Elite Street earlier this year regarding her forecast for the luxury home sales market, Radnay stated that she believed that 2025 would bring an acceleration in high-end sales.
“2025 will be a strong year for luxury sales,” she said. “There’s a Midwestern value to exclusive real estate, particularly on Lake Michigan, because we do have this protected class of real estate. We’re lucky enough not to be affected by catastrophic events, as we are seeing elsewhere in the country. It might be the time for people to realize there is something very special and unique about living on the lake on the North Shore.”
No single Chicago-area residential property ever has resold in an arm’s-length deal to another buyer for more than $25 million. In three cases, billionaires have assembled distinct properties for total amounts exceeding $25 million, but in each of those cases, no single residential property sold for $25 million, let alone for $35 million.
Since 2020, Justin Ishbia has paid $33.7 million for three adjoining lakefront homes in Winnetka that he demolished to make way for a mansion he is building with an estimated $44 million construction cost — meaning he would end up putting $77.7 million into his mansion. Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin paid $58.75 million in 2017 in four separate transactions — the largest of which was for $21.17 million — for the top four floors of the building at 9 W. Walton Street on the Near North Side. And Griffin, who never built out or combined those units and now has moved to Florida, sold the two highest floors in the building at 9 W. Walton Street, comprising 15,000 square feet of raw space, in November to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker for $19 million.
Finally, filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, paid $11.2 million in 2023 to buy one of Griffin’s full-floor Park Tower penthouses and then began combining it with an existing full-floor penthouse one level below that they had bought in 2015 for $18.7 million. With an estimated $3.5 million construction cost, the combined 16,000-square-foot duplex would have been created at a cost of $33.5 million.
However, none of those billionaires’ deals has involved a resale for more than $25 million.
Satter’s property had a $214,453 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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