Approved and under construction in Lake Villa, Lake County

Cedar Lake Estates

127 new Lennar homes approved at the southeast corner of Route 132 and Cedar Lake Road, where the dirt is already moving

For as long as anyone driving Grand Avenue can remember, the southeast corner at Cedar Lake Road has been open pasture. In March 2026 the Village of Lake Villa granted final approval to a full planned development on it, and by that summer the field had been stripped and graded. What is coming is a neighborhood of 127 detached single-family houses on about 63 acres, with two parks, a walking path through a central green corridor, and a large stormwater basin along the eastern edge.

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Nothing has been released yet: no floor plans, no published pricing, no model to walk and no sales office to call. This page puts what the public record does establish in one place and says plainly where it runs out.

Area: Lake Villa, Lake County
Builder: Lennar

Cedar Lake Estates fast facts

What the approval record establishes, and what has not been released. A line that says not yet released is the state of the record, not a gap in this page.

Where: Southeast corner of West Grand Avenue, which is Illinois Route 132, and North Cedar Lake Road, Lake Villa, Lake County. See West Grand Avenue and North Cedar Lake Road, Lake Villa, IL on the map
Builder: Lennar. The Village says the community will be built by Lennar, and the petitioner on the approval is a Lennar company
Homes: 127 detached single-family for-sale houses, individually owned
Site size: About 63 acres, roughly 13.9 of it detention and wetland
Lot sizes: About 8,000 square feet up to about 13,000, with roughly two thirds of the lots between 8,000 and 9,300
House sizes: Roughly 1,866 to 2,907 square feet, three to four bedrooms. Floor plans not yet released. Get notified
Status: Final planned development and final plat approved by adopted Village ordinance in March 2026; grading and utilities under way as of November 2026
Approved amenities: Two parks, a central open-space corridor with a pedestrian path, an eight-foot multi-use path along Cedar Lake Road, a landscaped perimeter buffer, and a trail connection toward Grant Woods Forest Preserve
Lake access: Not established. Cedar Lake is across Grand Avenue and no deeded or public access is on the record
Schools: Lake Villa Community Consolidated School District 41 for elementary, Antioch Community High School District 117 for high school. Which District 117 high school is not established
Street names inside the neighborhood: Not established. The approved plat lists them but the drawing is not in the public packet, so none are guessed at
Pricing: Not yet released. Get notified
Model home and sales opening: Not yet released; no sales office or contact exists yet. Get notified
HOA dues: Not yet set. An association declaration is in the approved plan set
Flood mapping: About 5.5 acres along the eastern edge are mapped inside the special flood hazard area; the rest is mapped outside it

Details here come from public entitlement records and satellite imagery, and every market figure carries the date it was read. Timing is a target, not a commitment, and is subject to change without notice.

Subdiview is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Lennar or the Village of Lake Villa. Lennar and its community names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for identification only.

Nothing at Cedar Lake Estates has been released yet

No prices, no plans, no model. When those land, the list hears first.

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About Cedar Lake Estates

Cedar Lake Estates is a conventional detached subdivision, which in 2026 Lake County is less common than it sounds, since much of what gets approved here now is attached product. All 127 homes are detached single-family houses on their own lots, sold to individual owners.

The lot sizes tell you most of what you need to know about how it will feel. The approval sets a floor around 8,000 square feet and a ceiling around 13,000, with roughly two thirds of the lots in the 8,000 to 9,300 band: a normal suburban lot, room for a real back yard, houses close enough that you will know your neighbors. Front yards were approved at 25 feet and side yards at six, tighter than the Village default.

The house range is roughly 1,866 to 2,907 square feet, three to four bedrooms, a deliberately wide band: the neighborhood will carry an entry-level detached product and a larger move-up product side by side rather than one size repeated 127 times. The plan lineup has not been released, and the upper end of the approved range matches no plan currently published in this market, so none are listed here.

About 13.9 acres, better than a fifth of the site, goes to detention and wetland, including a basin of about seven and a half acres along the eastern edge. Two parks are approved: a gateway green near the Grand Avenue frontage and a playground park near the entrance. A central corridor with a walking path runs through the middle, an eight-foot multi-use path runs along Cedar Lake Road into the development, and a trail connection from Steven Sherwood Park gets you toward Grant Woods Forest Preserve on foot.

What the plan does not show is any lake frontage or lake right. Cedar Lake is immediately north across Grand Avenue and the project is named for it, which is exactly why this needs saying out loud: no deeded or public lake access for this community appears anywhere in the record. Treat the lake as a view and a neighbor, not an amenity you are buying, unless somebody shows you a document.

On the ground, the site was stripped and graded through the 2026 season. By October 2026 satellite imagery showed a sharp-edged engineered area filling precisely the southeast quadrant of the intersection, with a road prism, trenching lines, a stockpile and a basin form on the parcel footprint, while the field across Cedar Lake Road was untouched and still green. The Village's street superintendent reported continued utility installation here in early November 2026. Horizontal work like that normally runs a season or more ahead of a model home.

One honest caveat. The final plat was approved by adopted ordinance, which is verified. Whether it has been recorded this page cannot show you: the recorder is paywalled and login-walled, and the parcel roll still carries the old undivided legal descriptions. Recording is a precondition to any development activity and that activity is plainly under way, so the inference is strong. It is still an inference, and no document number is published here.

Location and what it is like around here

Cedar Lake Estates sits at a genuine crossroads rather than at the end of a cul-de-sac, and that is the biggest practical fact about living here. West Grand Avenue is Illinois Route 132, a state highway running east toward Lindenhurst and Gurnee and west toward Fox Lake. North Cedar Lake Road is a county highway running north toward Antioch and south toward Round Lake and Grayslake. Both are posted at 45 at the site.

That cuts both ways, and you want to know it before you pick a homesite. Two arterials at the doorstep is convenience and it is also road noise. The plan puts a landscaped buffer along the frontage, but lots backing or siding onto Grand Avenue or Cedar Lake Road will hear the road in a way interior lots will not. Ask about a specific lot, not the community.

Cedar Lake itself is what makes this corner feel like the Chain O'Lakes rather than outer suburbia. Lake Villa is lake country: Deep Lake, Cedar Lake, Petite Lake and the Fox Chain are all a short drive, and Grant Woods Forest Preserve is close enough that the plan runs a trail connection toward it. If your weekend is a kayak or a trail rather than a shopping center, this is the right part of Lake County.

Retail and services are concentrated east: Grand Avenue toward Lindenhurst and Gurnee carries the groceries, the big-box stores and the hospital campuses, and Lake Villa's small downtown is a mile and a half east.

The commuter rail story needs saying plainly rather than cheerfully. The Lake Villa Metra station on Railroad Avenue is roughly a mile and a half east, on the North Central Service, about 48 route miles from Chicago Union Station. That line is not high-frequency: 14 trains on a weekday, seven in each direction. Read the timetable against your own working hours before you decide the train is your plan.

The surrounding fabric is a mix, which is unusual and mostly good. Established Lake Villa subdivisions sit east and southeast, so there is mature resale stock nearby that reads the area for you. West of Cedar Lake Road is still open and agricultural, so ask what is entitled over there before counting on the view staying as it is.

Service districts here are Lake Villa Township, the Lake Villa Township Fire Protection District, the Lake Villa Public Library District and the Lake County Forest Preserves, with water through the Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency. There is no park district and no sanitary or drainage district over the site, which is why the parks and basins will be the neighborhood's own responsibility.

Schools, taxes and the assessment mechanics

The school situation is genuinely unusual, so it was checked parcel by parcel. Elementary and high school are different districts and neither follows the village boundary: Lake Villa Community Consolidated School District 41 for elementary, Antioch Community High School District 117 for high school. District 117 operates more than one high school and which serves this parcel is not established, so no school building is named here. Confirm with the districts once addresses are assigned, and again at contract: a new 127-home subdivision is the kind of thing that prompts a boundary review.

On taxes, refuse a village-wide average: those are built from older housing stock, often assessed years behind the market, and they understate what a newly built house pays. This parcel's own composite rate, as of the 2026 tax year, is about 9.28 dollars per 100 dollars of equalized assessed value, across the county, the township, the Village, the two school districts, the community college, the fire and library districts, the forest preserves and the water agency.

The Illinois mechanic underneath that confuses almost everybody, so here it is in plain arithmetic. Your bill is not the rate times your purchase price. The county assesses a home at roughly one third of fair market value, calls that the equalized assessed value, and applies the rate to that. The working figure here is about 3,094 dollars per 100,000 dollars of market value per year before exemptions, or roughly 3.09 percent of market value. Run it on the number you are considering, then subtract the general homestead exemption you qualify for as an owner-occupant.

Two timing quirks catch new-construction buyers every year. A new parcel is assessed pro rata in its first year, so the first bill is artificially small and is not your real bill, and Illinois bills a year in arrears, so the first full-year bill arrives about a year behind closing.

One more line matters, because it is the most commonly mangled fact in this part of Illinois. This site falls inside a large pre-existing Lake County special service area covering much of the Lake Villa area, which long predates this development. Its levy is already inside the composite rate quoted above, so it is not an extra line stacked on top and it is not a development-specific assessment created to pay for this subdivision's infrastructure. What it funds, and its individual rate within the composite, is not established and is a fair question for the county. Separately, there is no tax increment financing district among this parcel's taxing bodies, and a TIF would not add to a homebuyer's bill anyway: it freezes the baseline for the other taxing bodies, so the effect lands on the schools, the park bodies and the library rather than on your statement. A special service area is a different instrument entirely.

Water, wetland and the flood picture

This is a low, wet corner of Lake County and the stormwater design is the most consequential engineering on the site, so here is the measured version.

On the current FEMA mapping, about 5.5 acres of the roughly 63-acre site are mapped inside the special flood hazard area, in the approximate category that carries no FEMA-published base flood elevation. The remaining 57 or so acres are mapped outside it. No part of the site is mapped in a regulatory floodway, and none falls into the detailed-study category. That is the picture as of the mapping in force in November 2026, and mapping does get revised.

Where that acreage sits is the reassuring part. It runs along the eastern edge, precisely where the approved detention basin of about seven and a half acres goes, so the mapped hazard area is being absorbed into the stormwater system rather than platted as homesites. And because FEMA publishes no elevation for an approximate area, the developer had to establish one: the file carries a base flood elevation determination plus a county stormwater commission letter approving it.

The mapped wetland on the property is isolated rather than federally jurisdictional, hence a county conditional isolated wetland impacts approval alongside a federal corps letter. The materially good fact is that none of the site is mapped as high-quality wetland under the county's advanced identification inventory, nor in one of its buffers.

What that means for you is concrete. Ask which lots sit nearest the basin and the corridor, because those have the open views and also the standing water. Ask whether a given lot will need flood insurance, which is a lender and address question rather than a subdivision question. And when addresses exist, look yours up in the FEMA Flood Map Service Center rather than relying on a whole-parcel read.

Market context before anything here is priced

No Cedar Lake Estates price exists. What follows is surrounding context with its date attached, so you have a frame rather than a guess, and none of it is a quote for this community.

As of November 2026, this builder's existing Lake County communities about seven miles north were starting in the low 400s and its communities about seven miles south in the high 300s. Its detached product in Libertyville, a stronger submarket, was starting above 560,000 dollars on the same date. Both nearer comparisons lean on attached or smaller-lot product, while what is approved here is detached houses on 8,000 to 13,000 square foot lots. Read those figures as a range carrying their November 2026 date, since new-construction base pricing moves month to month.

The other half of the frame is the resale market right around the site. Established Lake Villa subdivisions east and southeast trade regularly, so you can see what a comparable existing house in these same school districts sells for today. Ask for recent closings within a mile of the corner.

One structural point in this buyer's favor: these are homes for sale to individual buyers rather than a rental community. The approval set includes a homeowners association declaration drafted for a fee-simple for-sale neighborhood, and the lot-by-lot variations are tiered by individual lot size, which only makes sense for separately conveyed lots.

What is still unknown, and what would settle it

A page about a community this early is only useful if it is straight about its own gaps. Here is what is genuinely not known, and what would resolve it.

Pricing is the big one, unknown in the most literal sense: nothing here has been priced, there is no sales office, no named sales contact, and there has never been a listing at this site. That resolves with the first price sheet, normally within weeks of a model opening. Floor plans and square footages are not released either; the approval fixes only the size band and the bedroom counts.

The internal street names are not established. The approved plat lists them, but the drawing is not in the public meeting packet, the county road centerline layer still shows only the pre-existing roads, and the county address layer shows no pending addresses. Streets and addresses land together, and they are what will let you confirm a school assignment and a flood determination for a specific lot.

Which District 117 high school serves this parcel is not established; the district's own boundary lookup settles it once addresses exist. Whether the final plat has been recorded, and under what document number, is not established either. Recording is a precondition to any development activity and that activity is under way, so the inference is sound, but the document number is not in hand and is therefore not published.

Lake access is not established, as above, and it is the one unknown here that could change what the neighborhood is worth to you. Ask for it in writing.

What the county special service area funds, its individual rate, the HOA dues, the phasing order, whether basements are offered and the model opening date are all open. Dues and basements come with the price sheet.

Buying new construction with Joe Keegan of Brokerocity

I'm Joe Keegan, a licensed Illinois real estate broker with Brokerocity, and Lake County is my own market. Cedar Lake Estates is a community I can represent you in myself rather than hand you off to anybody.

Here is the part most people buying new construction do not know until it is too late. The person at the builder's sales desk is paid by the builder and represents the builder. You are entitled to your own broker instead, at no cost to you, and the builder has generally already budgeted for one whether you bring one or not. The catch is timing: you usually need to be registered as represented at your very first visit to the model or the sales trailer. Walk in alone and the builder may decline to recognize your broker afterward. At Cedar Lake Estates that first visit has not happened yet for anybody, which is the easiest possible moment to get this right.

What I actually do on a build like this one: read the purchase agreement and every addendum before you sign, including the escalation and delay language buyers skim; press on incentives, design center credits and closing cost contributions rather than taking the first sheet; walk the lot with you and say plainly when a homesite is not worth what is being asked, which here means being honest about the arterial frontage and the lots nearest the basin; and attend the pre-drywall and final walkthroughs and push the punch list. On a wet site I will also push you to schedule your own independent inspection early enough to matter, and to get drainage and grading items resolved before the warranty period runs out.

If you want to talk it through, call or text me at 224-385-8779. If you would rather just be kept informed, the interest list below is the lower-effort option and I will not chase you.

Joe Keegan is a licensed real estate broker in Illinois. Joining the interest list does not create a brokerage relationship or any agency agreement.

How Cedar Lake Estates compares nearby

Community	Where	What it is	Status, November 2026
Cedar Lake Estates	Route 132 and Cedar Lake Road, Lake Villa	127 detached houses on about 63 acres	Approved, graded, utilities going in, nothing released
Lennar community about seven miles north	Antioch	Smaller-lot product	Selling, from the low 400s
Lennar community about seven miles south	Volo	Smaller-lot product	Selling, from the high 300s
Lennar detached product	Libertyville	Detached single-family, stronger submarket	Selling, above 560,000 dollars
Established Lake Villa subdivisions	East and southeast of the site	Existing detached homes, same school districts	Resale only, and the best local price anchor

The short version: for brand-new detached construction in Lake Villa itself this is the one, and it is at dirt stage. If you need to move this year, the selling communities north and south are where to look, and the established subdivisions east of this corner are the resale option. Every figure above carries its November 2026 date.

Cedar Lake Estates questions

What is Cedar Lake Estates?

Cedar Lake Estates is a new Lennar community approved for 127 detached single-family for-sale homes on about 63 acres at the southeast corner of West Grand Avenue, which is Illinois Route 132, and North Cedar Lake Road in Lake Villa, Lake County. The Village granted final planned-development and final-plat approval by adopted ordinance in March 2026. Grading and utility work are under way on the site. No pricing, no floor plans, no model home and no sales office have been released, and there has never been a listing here.

Who is the builder?

Lennar. The petitioner named on the Village's final approval is CalAtlantic Group, a Lennar company, and the Village's own project page says the community will be built by Lennar. Subdiview is not affiliated with Lennar, CalAtlantic or the Village of Lake Villa.

How much will homes at Cedar Lake Estates cost?

Pricing has not been released, so there is no number to quote and we will not invent one. For context rather than prediction, and with its date attached: as of November 2026 Lennar's existing Lake County communities start around the high 300s about seven miles south of here and in the low 400s about seven miles north, while its Libertyville detached product starts above 560,000 dollars. Those are different communities on different lots in different school districts. The homes approved here are detached houses of roughly 1,866 to 2,907 square feet, which is a wider and larger range than either of the nearer comparisons. Join the interest list and you will hear when real numbers exist.

When will Cedar Lake Estates open for sale?

No sales date has been announced, and any date you read anywhere should be treated as a target subject to change. What is on the record is a clear sequence: preliminary approval in 2025, final planned-development and final-plat approval by adopted ordinance in March 2026, mass grading visible on satellite imagery through the 2026 season, and the Village's own street superintendent reporting continued utility installation as of November 2026 with additional crews expected. Horizontal work of that kind normally runs a season or more ahead of a model opening.

What are the homes like?

All 127 are detached single-family houses, individually owned and sold. The approval sets the house range at roughly 1,866 to 2,907 square feet with three to four bedrooms, so it spans an entry-level detached product and a larger move-up product in the same neighborhood. Lot sizes run from about 8,000 square feet up to about 13,000, with roughly two thirds of the lots in the 8,000 to 9,300 square foot band. The approval also granted tighter setbacks than the Village's default, with 25-foot front yards and six-foot side yards. Specific floor plans, elevations and square footages for this community have not been released, so none are listed here.

What schools would Cedar Lake Estates be in?

This was checked parcel by parcel, and the answer is unusual enough to be worth saying twice: the elementary and the high school are different districts and neither follows the village boundary. Elementary is Lake Villa Community Consolidated School District 41. High school is Antioch Community High School District 117. District 117 operates more than one high school and which one serves this specific parcel is not established, so no school building is named on this page. Confirm the assignment with the districts once street addresses exist.

What will the property taxes be like?

This parcel's own composite tax rate, as of the 2026 tax year, is about 9.28 dollars per 100 dollars of equalized assessed value. In Illinois the equalized assessed value is roughly one third of fair market value, so the working figure is about 3,094 dollars per 100,000 dollars of market value per year before any exemption, or roughly 3.09 percent. Do not use a village-wide median instead, because medians are built from older housing stock and understate a new build. Two timing points matter: a new-construction parcel is assessed pro rata in its first year, and the first full bill arrives a year behind closing.

Is there a special service area or a TIF here?

The site sits inside a large pre-existing Lake County special service area that covers much of the Lake Villa area and long predates this development. Its levy is already inside the composite rate quoted above, so it is not an extra line added on top, and it is not a development-specific assessment created for these homes. What that county area funds, and its individual rate, is not established and is worth asking the county about. There is no tax increment financing district among this parcel's taxing bodies. Those two instruments get confused constantly: a special service area is a levy on a defined area, while a TIF freezes the baseline for the other taxing bodies and does not add anything to a homebuyer's bill.

Is any of the site in a flood hazard area?

Yes, a small part of it, and the honest version is better than a yes or a no. On the current FEMA mapping about 5.5 acres of the roughly 63-acre site are mapped inside the special flood hazard area, in the approximate category that carries no FEMA-published base flood elevation. The remaining 57 or so acres are mapped outside it. No part of the site is mapped in a regulatory floodway and none falls in the detailed-study category. That mapped acreage runs along the eastern edge, which is where the approved seven-and-a-half-acre detention basin goes, so it is being absorbed into the stormwater system rather than platted as homesites. Because FEMA publishes no elevation there, the developer had to establish one, and the approval file carries both a base flood elevation determination and a county stormwater commission letter approving it. Check the specific address with the FEMA Flood Map Service Center once addresses are assigned.

Does the community have access to Cedar Lake?

Not that anyone can show you, and this is the single most important thing to be careful about here. Cedar Lake is immediately north of Grand Avenue, directly across the road from the site, and the development takes its name from it. Whether the community carries any deeded or public lake access is not established, and nobody should buy here assuming it does. What the approval does commit to is two parks, an eight-foot multi-use path along Cedar Lake Road continuing through the neighborhood, a central open-space corridor with a walking path, and a trail connection toward Grant Woods Forest Preserve. Get any lake right you care about in writing.

What about wetlands and stormwater on the site?

About 13.9 acres of the site, better than a fifth of it, is given over to detention and wetlands, including a seven-and-a-half-acre basin along the eastern edge. The mapped wetlands on the property are isolated rather than federally jurisdictional, which is why the file carries a county conditional isolated wetland impacts approval alongside a federal letter. Usefully, none of the site is mapped as high-quality wetland under the county's advanced identification inventory. For a buyer that mix means real open space and real water views on some lots, and it also means mosquitoes and goose management are part of life in a neighborhood like this one.

Should I use my own agent when buying new construction?

Yes, and the timing matters more than most buyers expect. The person sitting at the builder's sales desk works for the builder. You can have your own broker instead, touring with you, reading the contract and every addendum line by line, and pushing on incentives, upgrades and closing cost credits. The catch is that you usually have to be registered as represented at your very first visit to the model or the sales trailer, because after that the builder may decline to recognize your broker at all. Get that sorted before Cedar Lake Estates opens, not after.

Is this the same Cedar Lake near Indiana?

No, and it is worth being clear about because the Indiana one outranks this project on almost every search. There is a town called Cedar Lake in Lake County, Indiana, and Lennar's own resource pages use the Cedar Lake name there. There are also Cedar Lake apartments in Michigan. This page is about the new Lennar single-family community in Lake Villa, Lake County, Illinois, at Grand Avenue and Cedar Lake Road. If you land on a page showing rentals or Indiana addresses, that is a different place.

How do I get updates on Cedar Lake Estates?

Join the interest list on this page. When pricing, floor plans, a model opening or the first available homes are released, the people on the list hear first, and I will tell you what I think of the numbers rather than just forwarding them.

Get on the Cedar Lake Estates interest list

Pricing, floor plans, the model opening and the first available homes all land at some point over the next stretch. The list hears first, and I will tell you what I think of the numbers when they show up rather than just forwarding them.

Joe Keegan is a licensed real estate broker in Illinois. Joining the interest list does not create a brokerage relationship or any agency agreement.