Marcus Lemonis Buys Lake Forest Mansion Next To His Other Mansion

LAKE FOREST, IL — Entrepreneur and television host Marcus Lemonis last month purchased a lakefront mansion adjacent to another mansion he already owns in Lake Forest. Lemonis, 44, the host of "The Profit" on CNBC and the CEO of Camping World, purchased a 1930 Walter Frazier-designed home through a limited liability company on Sept. 28 for $1.85 million, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The price on the 6,500-square-foot home on a 1.24-acre lot had been reduced from $2.3 to $2.2 million 10 days prior to its sale. It includes six bedrooms, three of which have fireplaces, a coach house and a sprawling back yard.

The home was formerly owned by Ralph Austin Bard, the undersecretary of the Navy during World War II, according to the Tribune's Elite Street column. Earlier this summer, Lemonis sold a condo in a luxury Gold Coast tower to a partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis for $3.15 million, it said.

Lemonis also purchased a 2006-built Georgian mansion next door at 1015 Spring Lane with an backyard adjacent to his new home for nearly $5 million in August 2013. The combined annual property tax bill of the two properties runs nearly $110,000.

In August 2016, Lemonis sold another multi-million dollar Lake Forest house, a French Normandy mansion at 690 S. Ridge Road he had purchased for $4.9 million. After about eight years on the market he parted ways with the property for $2.7 million.

Sitting on the corner now located between Lemonis' two properties is the home of Winifred Crawford and her husband Robert, the founder of a Lake Forest-based furniture rental firm. The property was last sold in 1997 for $1.6 million and the current home at has an estimated market value for taxing purposes of just over $1 million, according to the Lake County Assessor's Office. Historic Preservation Commission records show the owners received permission in 2016 to demolish the home at the site.

On the other side is the Lake Forest mansion of Jeff Brincat, the CEO of a Waukegan credit and debt counseling firm, which was featured in an ad by Gov. Bruce Rauner mocking Democratic nominee J.B. Pritzker's property tax appeal. Brincat, a donor to Rauner's campaign and many Republican candidates, also successfully appealed with the assessor's office to reduce the estimated value of the home below $4 million – although he purchased the house for $5.2 million in 2008 and he his wife Kelly later listed it for $6.5 million. In 2013, he claimed he would be moving to Tennessee for a "friendlier business climate," according to Chicago Magazine, but was instead appointed by Rauner to the Illinois Racing Board, which he now chairs.

More recently sold Lake Forest homes »