When BuyING & HoldING Real Estate Goes Wrong A Famous Example

Buying and selling real estate is usually a great idea. But there are exceptions to any rule, and this is a story of one 0f those outlier exceptions. In this case the home owner was none other than basketball great Michael Jordan. You'd think that name recognition alone would have made for an easy sale, because Jordan lived in his Chicago home for 19 years. But Jordan listed his home in Highland Park, about 25 miles north of Chicago, in 2012, and it just didn't sell. Until recently, that is,  but at a massive discount.The house was first listed in 2012 for $29 million US. Jordan lowered the price a few times over the years but in 2015 he settled on a number he wouldn’t budge from: $15 million. 

Well, not exactly $15M million. The precise list price was $14,855,000, and if you add up all the digits  - 1+4+8+5+5 - they equal 23, which was Jordan’s number when he was a Chicago Bull. Number #23 wanted 23-price and nothing would budge him for a decade.

The sale finally closed in December 2024 with news media reporting the rice to be $9.5 million. That’s a 67% price reduction from Jordan's list price 13 years ago, but also represents a much greater cash loss when you factor in the original $29 million price was in 2012 dollars.

Jordan has a massive real estate portfolio but his house in Chicago was just too ‘Michael Jordan’ for buyers looking for a luxury home. It was so heavily personalized with his image and Air Jordan brand, that realtors came and went as they vainly listed the property and had to admit defeat when they could not deliver a buyer.

In the interim, the 56,000 square foot custom-built house on 7 acres at 2700 Pointe Lane was a major tourist attraction because the driveway gate had a large metal #23 attached to it, just in case you weren't sure who the famous owner was. Who wouldn’t want a holiday photo in front of that memorabilia?

Jordan designed the house to fit his lifestyle and to accommodate his every personal whim. It has a full-sized basketball court, a cigar room, and some pretty impressive finishing in the living areas.

The cigar room with poker tables above would have seen some pretty famous names whiling away their evenings with Jordan, a cigars aficionado & gambling fanatic

Jordan owns numerous other houses across the United States. He didn't grow up in Chicago or even Illinois. Jordan was born in North Carolina and even owned the Charlotte Hornets NBA franchise from 2010 until 2023. He is said to own two luxury residences in his Tar Heel home state, a house 30 minutes from the Hornets' practice facility and a condo in Charlotte itself. Add to that a winter getaway in Park City, Utah and a summer retreat in Jupiter, Florida. The gated community in Jupiter has an entire golf course which was designed by another sports legend, golfer Jack Nicklaus.

SO WHO BOUGHT MICHAEL JORDAN'S FAMOUS CHICAGO HOME? AND WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO IT?

Local real estate investor John Cooper is the buyer. He's spotted an opportunity to leverage Michael Jordan's fame by converting it into a timeshare vacation resort. To own your own piece of NBA sports history, you'll need to fork out $1 million to own a share in the cooperative. That will get you a single one-week stay per year, although you'll also be able to bid on other weeks if they are free. Owners will be on the hook for 2% of the annual maintenance costs, which it's estimated will be about $25,000 per owner.

Here is the announcement John Cooper's Champion Point company made in January 2025 announcing the timeshare deal.

                    The photos below were made available to timeshare investors in January 2025 by
                                                                 ​ www.championspoint.com 

The Chicago Bulls have been pretty ordinary since the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippin-Dennis Rodman dynasty ended in the late 1990s. But in March 2025, Bulls fans saw one of the most exciting endings to an NBA game ever, and it came against none other than the Los Angeles Lakers featuring basketball icons LeBron James and Luka Doncic. It's 12 seconds of pure sports magic! And a fellow Australian Josh Giddey rammed in the final dagger from 50 feet away to break Lakers' hearts.