2024 Lake Minnetonka home in Mound, with mid-century modern style, listed for about $3.15M

Angela Hoffman was out for a run in 2020 when she spotted a house she wanted on a peninsula in Mound. She contacted its owner to say she was interested in buying it.

“A couple of weeks later, we had a purchase agreement,” she said. “I think they were thinking about it, and my timing happened to be right.”

Hoffman loved the home’s mid-century modern design, featuring a flat roof, clean lines, natural materials and big windows.

She and her husband, Noah Hoffman, expected to restore it.

“We knew it needed some work,” she said.

But they discovered the house was too far gone.

“It was a wooden home, and the wood was rotting,“ she said. ”We had water coming through all the windows on the main level.”

The Hoffmans had the house razed and built a new one in its footprint, sticking to the previous home’s mid-century modern look, but larger and with updates such as an attached three-car garage.

“Our goal was to keep the legacy of that house and build something as similar as we could,” Hoffman said.

When two years of construction ended in 2024, the Hoffmans and their three children moved in, having spent the interim living on a small hobby farm in Minnetrista. But within a year, the couple decided they wanted to return to rural life.

So they put the five-bedroom, four-bathroom split-level on the market for about $3.15 million.

The 5,269-square-foot home comes with 80 feet of sandy-bottom lakeshore. It’s closer to the water’s edge than current zoning rules would allow, but its location is grandfathered in, Hoffman said.

The windows are designed to blur the line between indoors and outdoors.

“They actually have incredible views on both sides,” said Jordan-based architect Mike Behr, who designed the house. “We did everything we could so that no matter where you are in the house you get a lake view. It’s a unique piece of property and we wanted to capitalize on that.”

The home has several decks looking out at the lake, including one with a hot tub.

“We wanted to maximize the summers,” Angela Hoffman said. “Actually we use it in the winter, too.”

There’s also a sun room, an office, a couple of flex rooms and two fireplaces. The primary bedroom has a private covered deck, a large walk-in closet and a bathroom with a steam shower.

Much of the floor on the main level is covered in terrazzo, a concrete-like substance speckled with pieces of colored stone and glass. Durable and easy to clean, it’s most often found in airports, old schools and on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Another feature of the terrazzo: in-floor radiant heating.

Floors in other areas of the house are birch, sealed but not stained. The colors echo an earthy look, including the exterior’s sage green. That green reappears here and there within the house: a stair railing, a bathroom, a kitchen backsplash.

Many of the ceilings, including the one above the deck, are covered with polished tongue-and-groove wood.

“It was a feature that stood out to us in the old house right away,” Hoffman said.

The Hoffmans have come to enjoy Mound.

“Mound is Lake Minnetonka’s best kept secret,” Hoffman said. “I’m probably a little biased, but it has some small-town feel. There’s an array of home types and sizes. Anyone can be welcome in Mound: lake homes big and small, cottages, farmland. It really has something for everyone.”

Stereotypical images of Lake Minnetonka communities as homogenously affluent don’t entirely apply to Mound, the third largest (population of just over 9,000) of the 14 cities around the lake.

The median value of its homes, $372,000 according to census figures, is lower than its lakeside neighbors (in its neighbor Tonka Bay, for example, it’s $870,000) and also lower than the median value in Hennepin County as a whole ($405,000).

It also has a history of helping one another. Mound has one of the oldest food shelves in the country, the 56-year-old Westonka Food Shelf.

“We’ve got blue collar, we’ve got white collar. ... It’s not just one or the other,” said Mayor Jason Holt. “Mound over the last couple years has been on an upward trajectory.”

It has many opportunities for new development and amenities, he said.

With the nearest big-box stores a 20-minute drive away, Mound residents support local businesses, he said. Surfside Park offers a new playground and a beach. The Dakota Rail Regional Trail goes through town. The city makes 650 boat slips available for rent.

Schools in the well-regarded Westonka District have been undergoing dramatic building expansions in recent years, but classroom sizes remain smaller than in many other districts, Holt said.

Holt has lived in other small cities and grew up in Apple Valley, but none of them “were as tight-knit a community as Mound,” Holt said.

“I just can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he said.

Andrew Beitler of Minnesota My Home (612-432-3873, andrew@mnmyhome.com) has the $3,149,000 listing.