Former Cubs pitcher Yu Darvish has finally found a buyer for his lakefront Evanston home, ending a listing saga that dragged on longer than his entire run in Chicago. The property at 90 Kedzie Street went under contract on April 15 after first hitting the market in October 2022. Darvish, by comparison, signed with the Cubs in February 2018 and was traded to the Padres in December 2020.
That bit of timing is almost too neat. Darvish’s Cubs chapter came with a six-year, $126 million contract, but his Chicago stay lasted less than three seasons. His Evanston house, meanwhile, lingered on the market long enough to outlast the whole thing.
The house itself was never exactly ordinary. Darvish and his wife, Seiko, a four-time World Wrestling Champion and one of Japan’s most accomplished and famous female wrestlers, bought the property in May 2018 for $4.55 million. Built in 1904, the lakefront home sits on a double lot with more than 150 feet of shoreline and what listings describe as Evanston’s only deep-water dock. Recent listings put it at about 5,865 square feet with five bedrooms, four full baths, and two half baths, though earlier listings and reports described it as a six-bedroom, 5,400-square-foot home.
When the Darvishes first listed it in 2022, the asking price was $5.75 million. As the months stretched on, the price came down. By June 2024, it had dropped to $4,995,011, a cheeky nod to Darvish’s jersey number, 11. That move placed the home in a very specific category of athlete real estate theater: the jersey-number asking price.
And Darvish’s broker was hardly inventing the gimmick. Michael Jordan famously relisted his Highland Park estate at $14,855,000, with the digits adding up to 23. The difference is that the old line about Jordan’s mansion “remaining unsold” is no longer true. Jordan’s house did eventually sell in late 2024 after more than a decade on the market.
Darvish’s Evanston property appears to have gone a step further than the No. 11 stunt. By the time the home was publicly marketed again in 2025, the asking price had slipped to $4,499,011, keeping the jersey-number flourish alive while inching closer to the couple’s 2018 purchase price. The home is now listed as contingent, meaning a contract is in place, but the sale still has hurdles to clear before it officially closes.
The long road to a buyer was not only about price. The property has a bit of baggage, including a well-publicized dispute with neighbors over a fence that allegedly blocked views of Lake Michigan. That lawsuit was filed in 2019 and later settled confidentially in 2020, adding one more layer of lore to an already high-profile address.
Still, the appeal is obvious. The interior has been marketed as fully remodeled, with white oak cabinetry, high-end appliances, soaring ceilings, broad lake views, and the sort of open-plan spaces built for people who enjoy the phrase “entertaining” a little too much. It is the kind of house that sells not just a floor plan, but a fantasy: vintage bones, modern polish, rare lake frontage, and a dock that sounds almost made up for Evanston.
So yes, Yu Darvish’s old Evanston home has a buyer at last. Whether the deal closes is still the final pitch. But after years of sitting, slicing, dropping, and trying on athlete-approved pricing tricks, the house may finally be headed off the market for good.
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