Minnesota’s most expensive house listing just dropped in price

Luxury homes were the breakout star of the Twin Cities’ real estate market in 2025, with house sales priced at more than $1 million outpacing every other price range.

Still, selling a Lake Minnetonka estate that’s by far the state’s most expensive listing is as gargantuan a task as its $50 million price tag.

That challenge is now facing Lindsay Bacigalupo and Christine Smith from the Wayzata office of Germany-based Engel & Völkers, who recently became the second team of agents to try to sell the listing for the third time in as many years. Luxury-level homes in general take much longer to sell than more affordable options — years instead of months. And the areas around Lake Minnetonka — including Wayzata, where this house is — are the state’s most expensive places to live, according to the Star Tribune’s Hot Housing Index.

Compass first quietly marketed the eight-acre property and its 650 feet of shoreline in August 2024 for $68 million. After that test, it officially hit the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in May of last year for a lower $55 million asking.

If the property should now sell for $50 million or even close to it, it will likely rank among the most expensive sales in the country. In 2025, the biggest sale in the U.S. was a $133 million Florida compound, according to Redfin. All of the top-10 sales last year fetched at least $60 million.

The house reportedly cost more than $90 million to build and was the dream of a businessman who died before he ever lived there. It took two years to plan and five years to build.

Completed in 2024, Lake Point Estate, as it’s known, is fully furnished, right down to the dishes in the cupboard. The gated compound includes nearly 30,000 square feet of living space in several buildings, including a pair of guest houses, a pool house and a boat house.

Q: Engel & Völkers is hardly the best-known brokerage in the Twin Cities. How did you get the gig?

A: [The sellers] felt like, if you hire a well-known local real estate agent, of course, you’re going to access the local luxury market. The trustees [of the estate] were really looking for a hands-on approach and access to international buyers.

No matter who you’re interviewing [in the Twin Cities], none of us have ever sold a property at this price point. We really use our resources in other markets where Engel & Völkers has sold trophy, record-breaking properties in other markets.

Q: Your reaction the first time you saw the house?

A: We pulled through the gate, and we just said, “We have to get boots on the ground.” People have to come and see this property to really understand the beauty. There aren’t photos that can do it justice. I’ve never been in a property like this.

A: We really want to go beyond just putting it on MLS because I don’t think a lot of ultra-high-net-worth clientele are just surfing Zillow. It’s very expensive, of course, to market a property like this. So we want to be very intentional that our marketing is really, truly to reach the right buyer.

It’s probably not going to be somebody sitting in Italy saying, “Oh, I would love to just move to Minnesota. Let’s just go online and check out what’s available.” So we really have to get the property in front of them.

Q: To market the house, you recently held a wine tasting by flying in a winemaker from Italy and hosted a Super Bowl party for agents and brokers. What does all that cost?

A: Sellers might not even realize it, but when they’re hiring a real estate agent, you’re hiring a marketing firm, to an extent. We’re bringing in somebody who’s going to travel to do video that costs five figures. With a property like this, some of our plans include pretty big events. It’s almost like planning a wedding.

You’re decorating the home, you’re catering, and you’re potentially hiring bartenders. It’s tens of thousands of dollars for anything that you do on this type of scale. We need people to actually see and experience this property in person, so that they’re really motivated to go out and tell their clients about the property.

A: No. It was so tastefully done. MartinPatrick 3 was the designer on the property, and everything was hand-selected for the spaces. We’ve brought in just a little pop of color here and there and floral arrangements to complement it. We’ve set the dining room tables for staging purposes.

Q: Do you background-check prospective buyers?

We do. It’s really quite sad, but there’s a lot of fraud out there now. There’s a certain level of vetting at any price point, and especially at this one because it does take a lot of time to show this property. It’s a small group of people touring this property, and it takes a couple hours. It’s a long tour.

A: Usually, it’s in the form of a letter from the financial adviser or something along those lines. We also want to understand who the buyer is so we can curate a tour of the property. With 30,000 square feet, you want to make sure that you’re spending time in the places that feel like they might be most important to each buyer.

Q: Are there many qualified Minnesota buyers?

We have a colleague who sold a $40 million property [out of state]. Both the buyer and seller were from Minnesota. He was really blown away because he just didn’t think that that wealth really existed here, but it really does.

I’m not saying that there’s thousands of buyers in Minnesota who can afford this property, but it is surprising that there are maybe more than you would think.

Q: With that kind of money, you could buy a home just about anywhere in the world. Why here?

A: There’s really an opportunity here for this property to be an international buyer or somebody who travels coast to coast a lot for work. Minnesota is an amazing hub. You can be on either coast in a couple of hours. If you need to be in a central time zone, it’s a great place to raise a family.

And we’re pretty protected from a lot of the natural disasters, so insurance costs can be more affordable here. For people who are really looking to protect their assets and invest in property and invest in something that’s kind of a safe bet, I’m hoping that with this property, we’re going to draw a lot more attention to us as a state and just see more and more of that coming.

A: For the most part, a property like this is out of reach even for most professional athletes. I think it’ll either be a local buyer who’s looking to buy a legacy property that’s going to be a multigenerational home, a property that gets passed down within the family.

Or it could easily be an international property collector. It’s crazy, but those exist. There’s a club for billionaires. I can’t remember the threshold, but in order to be in this club, you have to own property that’s like $50 million and above. That is a thing.