A Winnetka mansion that has been through a round of renovations and got a new pickleball court since selling for $6 million in 2024 is coming back on the market at nearly $15 million.
If the Locust Road house sells at or near its $14.9 million asking price, it will be the second-priciest Chicago-area home sale to date in 2026, behind only a lavishly redone historical mansion in Glencoe that went for $17.5 million in July.
It would also be the highest-priced sale in Winnetka since two lakefront mansions sold last year for more than $30 million each, and the rare North Shore home to sell for more than $10 million in an off-lakefront location.
About a mile and a half inland, the Locust Road house is an eight-bedroom, 16,000-square-footer built in 1999 on a little more than an acre and a half. (See photos of the property at the bottom of this story.)
The “coming soon” listing posted by Sonia Madden, an @properties Christie’s International Real Estate agent, says the property went through a “2025/2026 gut renovation” that included a redone primary bath, an added second-floor laundry room, wood flooring to replace stone in the main rooms and upstairs, and a new golf simulator in the basement.
But Crain’s comparison of photos from the 2024 and 2026 listings indicate the kitchen hasn’t been changed. In addition, much of the wood wainscoting is the same in both listings, and little more than painting wood beams white, changing out light fixtures and taking down some excessive wood trim has been done in several rooms. Some rooms remain as the 2024 listing showed them. They include a blue bar room, a skylit sunroom, and a wood-paneled study with a green stone mantel.
Thus it’s not clear that the recent work qualifies as a “gut renovation,” a term that typically means stripping the interior down to the studs and starting over from there.
The house gained a sports court, which can be used for pickleball, basketball and other sports, and an in-home theater in the rehab, as well as the golf simulator and additional laundry room. The pool, spa and surrounding terrace haven’t changed since the last sale, the photos indicate.
Madden did not respond to Crain’s request to talk about what’s been changed or upgraded in the house, and it wasn’t possible to ask the sellers, as they own it through a land trust that conceals their name in public records. They bought it from a different land trust in 2024 for $6 million, according to Cook County public records.
It’s not the only seemingly ambitious markup in the high-demand upper-end market on the North Shore. A Glencoe mansion that sold for $9.2 million in spring 2025 went up for sale in June at $14.8 million.
Competing with the Locust Road house in the off-lake top tier of Winnetka prices is a proposed new construction home on a Sunset Road site that is also about a mile and a half from the water. Its asking price is $16.9 million. And the top-priced home in town is a lakefront mansion that has been on the market since June 2025 at $29.9 million.
