List Price: $1,399,000
Sale Price: $1,376,420

The Property: At the northern tip of Stanton Point, a slim peninsula that juts half a mile into Fox Lake, this newly built five-bedroom house is one of four new homes planned for the site of the old Jukebox Saturday Night bar. “It’s a one-of-a-kind point, the best place on the Chain,” says Keith Vargo, whose Vargo Enterprises built and sold the house. The place has four bedrooms, two fireplaces, a media room, and second- and third-floor balconies that overlook the lake. The four houses will share a private, ten-slip marina, “with winter storage and remote-controlled boat lifts,” Vargo says.

Five friends—partners in Optimus, the downtown Chicago film and tape production company—bought the house together on August 7th, forming a corporation called Jamokes to make the purchase. “We’ve been together as partners for 11 years, and this is something we’ve always dreamed of doing,” says Tom Duff, the president of Optimus. (Given that the partners are all techies, it’s no surprise that they wired the house extensively before taking possession, even putting an iPod dock in the wall in every room.) Duff’s family spent the first week in the house; the other partners will use it on a rotating basis established by a draft. “If you don’t get your first choice for summer, you might get Thanksgiving or Christmas,” Duff says.           

Price Points: Although boaters flock to Fox Lake, this is only the second house on its shores to have gone for over $1 million, according to data from the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois. (Other homes that may have sold for more privately would not be in the company’s database.) In fact, the sale price for this house more than doubled the record for the highest amount previously paid for a place in Ingleside, an unincorporated area between Round Lake Beach and Fox Lake in Lake County. But given the rare setting and the small, private marina, Vargo is confident he will sell the remaining houses (only one other has been built so far) for about the same price.