Slam Dunk Sale: Michael Jordan’s $29 Million Mansion Finally Finds a Buyer After 12-Year Wait, But There’s a Catch
Michael Jordan’s Suburban Chicago Mansion Finds a Buyer After 12 Years
According to local media outlets such as CBS News, Jordan’s 5,202㎡ (approximately 1,573 pyeong) mansion in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, is currently registered as a ‘contingent contract’. This means that the buyer and Jordan have entered into a contract to buy and sell the house, but the contract can be terminated later depending on conditions such as the discovery of defects, loan processing, or failure to meet the appraisal value.
The buyer’s identity has not yet been confirmed, and the specific purchase price has not yet been announced. Jordan put the mansion on the market for $29 million, but when it didn’t sell, he lowered the price by nearly half to $14.855 million three years later. He also produced a promotional video in English and Chinese.
Jordan’s mansion is where he actually lived for about 20 years, starting in the 1990s. It has two floors above ground and one basement floor and has nine bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, a study, a movie theater, a home bar, a smoking room, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a fitness center, a tennis court, a golf practice range, and a guest house.
A large decorative piece featuring Jordan’s signature number, “23,” can be seen at the main entrance gate, and Jordan’s silhouette with the Nike logo can be seen on flags on the outdoor putting green and in the home theater. This mansion reflects Jordan’s tastes, including a tobacco storage facility and a poker table, as well as an aquarium brought from the Playboy Mansion in Chicago.
Many investors have tried to purchase the mansion and convert it into a Jordan Museum, conference center, or condominium, but these attempts have failed due to its location, which includes limited parking and being 3km away from Lake Michigan.
Jordan Makes Forbes’ List of America’s 400 Richest People
Jordan has mostly lived in his home state of North Carolina since retiring, but he is often seen enjoying his leisure time sailing in the Mediterranean Sea during the summer. Jordan is considered one of the richest sports stars in the world. Along with Tiger Woods and LeBron James, he is one of the few athletes to have made it to the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people last year, making him the first professional athlete to make it to the list.
His annual salary during his active years was approximately $93.28 million (approximately 124 billion won), but he has since received hundreds of millions of dollars annually from royalties from the ‘Air Jordan’ brand with Nike. It is reported that Air Jordan royalties amounted to $260 million (approximately 346.3 billion won) last year alone.
He sold a significant portion of his stake in the Charlotte Hornets, a professional basketball team in the United States, where he had been the owner for 13 years, and now has a large amount of cash. He invested $275 million (about 372.2 billion won) in acquiring the team in 2010, and with the sale price added last year, he is said to have a net asset value of about $3 billion (about 4.599 trillion won).