This Belleville fixer-upper has 28 rooms and a swimming pool in the basement
If you are in the market for a fixer-upper-turned-mansion, $399,000 may be able to get you 12,000 square-feet with 28 rooms and a swimming pool in the basement.
The home, located at 9 Lake Christine Court in Belleville, also features eight bedrooms and seven bathrooms. According to Beth Ortega, the real estate agent selling the home, there are 28 rooms total in the property.
“It’s a little hard to judge the actual amount of rooms because some of them open into each other,” Ortega said.
It is also difficult to gauge exactly how many floors there are in the home. Each side of the home features a different “wing” between the top and middle floors. Including the basement, this gives the home either four floors or 3.5 depending how you look at it.
Personal touches are evident throughout the home. A slough of balconies currently under repair surround the building. The basement boasts an impressive full-sized pool. And the two garages on either side of the house can fit 40 cars.
According to St. Clair County property records, the home was built by Alexander Development Company in 1991 and ownership transferred to James Alexander and his wife Lora Wasko-Alexander. It has remained with the family throughout. James died in 2021 and Lora passed away in 2023. Their surviving daughters, Julie Alexander and Mary Alexander, have now offered the family property up for sale.
Rumors abound that the building was once a school, or housed a cult, but Ortega assures that all’s well in the home’s history.
“People lie on the internet, I guess,” she said.
But that doesn’t mean the home isn’t without extensive need of repairs. Debris covers much of the floor, the carpet is worn and in need of replacing (or removing) and mold has inundated much of the basement.
Whoever buys the house, according to Ortega, would probably spend as much fixing the place as they would buying it, but the rewards would be significant. “This could go from being a fixer upper to a multi million dollar house if the right person buys it,” she said.
This story was originally published July 31, 2025 at 5:30 AM.