This $68M Lake Minnetonka mansion will become Minnesota’s most expensive house — if it sells

The grand sum of $68 million will buy Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s 24-bathroom mansion in Beverly Hills.

Or for the same price: a slightly smaller residence in what one agent deemed the “Hamptons of the Midwest” — Lake Minnetonka — and has a bowling alley and $4 million worth of Italian bulletproof doors and windows. And in the North Star State, that multimillion-dollar price would be the most expensive house sale in history.

“It’s a crown jewel site and a crown jewel house,” said John C. Adams of the father-son team at the real estate company marketing the property, Compass.

The new, never-lived-in, 28,000-square-foot house quietly hit the market this month but still gained national attention. It took two years to design and five years to build. But while its sale would smash the previous record of more than $17 million for the 2006 purchase of another Lake Minnetonka house, it’s far from the only eight-figure sale in recent years.

In just the past year, there’s been a flurry of land and homes sold well in excess of $5 million around Lake Minnetonka. It’s not just the sailboat-studded waters of the Twin Cities’ most mansion-ringed lake, though, that’s drawing upper-bracket buyers. Last month, there was a nearly 16% increase in pending sales of $1 million-plus houses across the metro, the biggest annual increase in any price range, according to data from the Minneapolis Area Realtors.

Cash buyers, who don’t have to grapple with mortgage rates and have homes in even more expensive locales, are driving those gains, agents say.

“Most often, they are in another very desirable market where the values have escalated exponentially,” said Carrie Hey, an agent who recently sold a $10 million house in Wayzata just weeks after listing it.

Many of today’s multimillion-dollar buyers, Hey said, are pulling money out of the stock market and cashing in other investments to put those dollars into a tangible asset they can enjoy.

“The cash buyer is more focused on lifestyle,” she said. “They find that their home purchase may be a better use of their cash versus another opportunity.”

Hey said she has no doubt there are plenty of buyers with ultra-deep pockets: She’s worked with several of them.

There could be even more expensive deals in Minnesota that never make it on the Regional Multiple Listing Service. Hey and other agents said there might also be properties worth more than the $17 million record, but they just haven’t traded hands.

Data from John Adams Real Estate shows there are nearly 50 homes on Lake Minnetonka that have a “relative capital investment,” Adams said, of more than $25 million, and nine of those could potentially exceed a value of $50 million.

The communities around Lake Minnetonka, he said, are attracting a new generation of buyers willing to pay top dollar to live in the area.

With virtually no undeveloped lakeside land, teardowns are often the only option for those who want to build. That was the case for the flat-roofed, contemporary home Hey just sold, which was built in 2021 after the buyer tore down the previous $3.2 million home.

Within the past year, nearly a half-dozen lakeshore land sales have fetched $5.5 million to $9 million.

Wayzata is one of the best-known and most desirable of those lakeside communities. It’s also the most expensive city in the metro by a wide margin, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s latest Hot Housing Index. Houses in the western suburb sold for $394 per square foot last year, more than double the cost of nearby Delano, the most active city on the index overall.

Wayzata was also one of the few metro areas where prices increased, rising 5% from the previous year and 36% higher than the five-year average. Agents said there has been a shortage of listings there and many houses sell off-market, long before Zillow surfers can take a peek.

Still, a $68 million price is raising eyebrows even among those used to watching buyers drop millions for raw land. That property is actually in Woodland — an exclusive, leafy suburb with just a few hundred residents — and is one-of-a-kind, Adams said.

“There is not another site that touches this degree of privacy and with this commanding of a perched, west-facing view,” he said.

The house was the dream of Robert Lothenbach — a businessman and Canterbury Park Hall of Fame horse owner — who never lived there; he died in November 2023 just months before construction was completed.

“This home has absolutely everything,” said John Kraemer, the homebuilder.

Kraemer, vice president of John Kraemer & Sons, said the project involved 92 companies, including MartinPatrick3 for decorating and Topo for landscaping.

“At one point, we had a little over 1,000 people per month at the house,” he said.

A long, meandering driveway passes a matching pair of 2,000-square-foot guesthouses before crossing a bridge over a man-made pond. With 655 feet of shoreline, there’s a main dock with its own boathouse as well as a guest boat dock and swimming pool with its own pool house. There’s even a separate lakeside “porch” that overlooks the water.

Dan Nepp, the TEA2 principal architect on the project, said Lothenbach wanted to create a primary home, not just a weekend lake place, that would be welcoming to family and friends but distinct from his house in California. So he flew the design team out West to see it.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to build this house. I want a different house,’” Nepp recalled.

Nepp said the site largely influenced the design of the house, but its shape and style comes from the English and French country estates of the late 1800s.

“Those houses, after 100 years, still look fantastic, and that was our goal,” said Matthew Erickson, the TEA2 project manager. “We wanted to meld that with more contemporary, modern living elements, including large window and door openings and connections to the outside exterior ... with high quality craftsmanship you don’t typically see.”

There are some modern stylings, such as walls of doors that open to the lake and a “live art” feature made of preserved mosses from around the world. But the house still sports traditional materials, including stone and slate. There’s an office lined with burled walnut walls and ceilings, plus a wine lounge wrapped in thick-cut stone reminiscent of an authentic French cellar.

“It’s kind of like a resort,” said Craig Martin of PKA Architecture, which designed the interior spaces. “He wanted to be sure his family and guests would be comfortable.”

There’s a bunk room that sleeps 24 and a spa with a Himalayan salt cave. There’s also a bar, movie theater, two bowling lanes, an arcade, a cigar lounge and a two-chair hair salon. The property includes an eight-car garage and a six-car garage.

Martin said Lothenbach selected the marble for the primary bathroom in the main house on a visit to an Italian quarry.

Andrew Edwins, another PKA architect, said that while there are definitely larger homes in Minnesota, this one has a rare level of craftsmanship.

“Legacy homes like this never come on the market,” he said. “They become heirlooms.”

The prospect of a $68 million sale in the Twin Cities has agents speculating whether a buyer will step forward at such an enormous price.

Hey said while there’s no doubt the property is special with its no-costs-spared creation, she and other agents are anxious to see what someone is really willing to pay.

“It’s hard for people to believe that they will ever achieve a price near that number,” she said.

Adams is confident. He said the list price is likely below what it would cost to build today. Construction costs have soared in the past several years, and the land itself — which cost $9.23 million in 2015 — is now worth an estimated $22 million.

“There’s no question that what’s on that site would be much more expensive to create in a post-pandemic environment,” Adams said. “It’s simply the most spectacular waterfront estate ever constructed in the Midwest.”