Derrick Rose’s property story is short, unusually well documented for a single transaction, and ends where it began. In January 2012, weeks after signing a five-year contract extension reported at around $95 million, he paid $2.8 million for a condominium near the top of a downtown Chicago high-rise. County records show the purchase was made through a private trust, included two parking spaces, and was financed with a $1.7 million mortgage.
He kept it through a career that took him to New York, Cleveland, Minnesota, Detroit, and Memphis, and turned down the chance to sell when he had one. After retiring in 2024, he moved back to Chicago, telling a local news outlet in November 2025 that he had returned to be present for his children.
This guide covers the condo, the suburb he left to buy it, and where he lives now.
Who is Derrick Rose?
Derrick Rose is a retired American basketball player who grew up in Englewood, on Chicago’s South Side, and was drafted first overall by his hometown Chicago Bulls in 2008. He was Rookie of the Year in 2009 and, in 2011, the youngest player ever named NBA Most Valuable Player, at 22.
A serious knee injury in the 2012 playoffs altered the trajectory of his career, and he spent his later years as a valued veteran across several franchises rather than as a franchise player. He retired in 2024.
That arc matters here, because it explains a property record that looks unusually thin for a player of his profile. The one significant purchase he made came at the exact peak of his earning power, and his connection to one city, and nothing since has replaced it.
The Chicago condominium
In December 2011, Rose signed his extension with the Bulls. The following month he bought in a 92-storey tower on Chicago’s Near North Side, taking a unit of 3,102 square feet with three bedrooms and four bathrooms, high in the building with views across Lake Michigan and the skyline.
The purchase price was $2.8 million, recorded through a private trust, with a $1.7 million mortgage from Northern Trust. Crain’s Chicago Business reported the transaction from county records at the time, which is why the details are firmer here than for most athlete purchases.
Rose was candid about why he chose the building. He had stayed in a hotel room there for several weeks the previous summer and, in his words, fell in love with it, adding that nobody bothers you there. For a 23-year-old MVP in his own hometown, privacy was the amenity that mattered. He moved there from Northbrook, a northern suburb, which was a significant change of setting: from a suburban house to a downtown tower.
Chicago’s basketball history includes some very different housing choices, from the suburban compound covered in the account of Michael Jordan’s house to the north-suburban and Lincoln Park properties described in the record of Joakim Noah’s homes. Rose went vertical and downtown instead.
The sale he decided not to make
In 2016, Rose was traded to the New York Knicks, and the obvious move would have been to sell a Chicago apartment he was no longer using.
He considered it and decided against it. Speaking to the New York Post that November, he said he had originally intended to sell but that the market had changed his mind, putting it plainly: the market was not good. Downtown Chicago’s luxury condominium market was soft at the time, and selling a $2.8 million unit into it would have meant accepting a loss.
No sale has been reported since. That does not prove he still owns it, because a quiet sale through a trust would not necessarily surface, but there is no evidence of one, and the absence of any listing across a decade is consistent with him having held on to it.
Other properties
While playing for the Memphis Grizzlies, Rose and his family bought a home in Memphis. No purchase price, date, or details for that property have been published in a reliable source, and it should not be assigned a figure.
Some celebrity property sites also place him in a Pacific Palisades house in Los Angeles. That claim comes from aggregator content with no record behind it, and no mainstream reporting or property record supports it. It should be treated as unverified.
Where does Derrick Rose live now?
Chicago.
This is well supported and recent. In November 2025, Block Club Chicago, a local non-profit newsroom, reported that Rose had moved back to the city after retiring from professional basketball the previous year. He described the decision as being about his three children and wanting to be present for them, and summed up his relationship with the city in a line the outlet used as its headline: he loves Chicago, the good, the bad and the ugly.
What is not established is which property he is living in. He is not reported to have sold the downtown condominium, and it remains the only Chicago home of his that has ever been documented, but no source states that he has moved back into it specifically rather than into another home in the area. The Memphis house may or may not still be in the family’s hands.
The accurate summary is that Derrick Rose lives in Chicago, the city he is from and where he played his best basketball, and that beyond the city itself, the specifics of his current home are not a matter of public record.
Sources
- Crain’s Chicago Business on the January 2012 purchase, the county records, the trust, the mortgage, and the unit’s size.
- The Washington Post on his 2016 decision to keep the condominium and his comments about the market.
- Block Club Chicago on his move back to Chicago in retirement and his reasons for it.
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