Asking Price: $5.499 million
The Property: Lansdowne, a grand Lake Bluff mansion that has been through a lot in the past several years, just got a sizable addition: 140 feet of Lake Michigan beach. The really amazing news is that in the “But Wait, There’s More!” tradition, the seller, Foxford LLC, is now throwing in the shoreline without adding to the price.

“When people came to see this home, they’d look out and say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful beach,’ but we’d have to say, ‘Yes, but it isn’t yours,’ ” says Peter Brennan, Foxford’s president. “Now that we’ve bought the beach, it’s added value, but we wanted to keep [the price] from getting out of someone’s reach.”

It’s good news for an estate that has had some rough years. In 2007, after sitting on the market for nearly six years at $25 million, the Georgian mansion and its 21 acres got sold to a developer for $16 million. That developer, Orren Pickell Designers & Builders, subdivided the land—the mansion now has four acres—but didn’t get much else done before mid-2012, when the firm averted bankruptcy by selling its assets to a group of investors. The Lansdowne property later transferred to Foxford. At this point, the 24-room mansion has stood vacant for about six and a half years—not to mention the six years it had been for sale at an inflated price.

For more on the mansion and its new beach, click through the photos below.