The ocean-to-Intracoastal property at 1000 S. Ocean (left) was listed at $106 million, which would be a Manalapan record. The property at 1020 S. Ocean sold last month for $89.93 million, nearly a record. Both are recently redeveloped. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By Christine Davis
After six years on the market, the ocean-to-Intracoastal estate at 2000 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan, owned by the billionaire Ziff family, finally sold in March for the recorded price of $94.17 million, and that sale set a record for the town. However, other properties are inching closer.
A big-ticket property that just came on the market is listed by Lawrence A. Moens Associates. The estate at 1000 S. Ocean Blvd. is priced at $106 million, as advertised on Realtor.com and on the Lawrence A. Moens website. The 22,868-total-square-foot, ocean-to-Intracoastal, eight-bedroom home and two-bedroom guest house, built in 2017, is sited on 2.2 acres.
It last sold for $14.995 million in April 2015. In 2017, the owner of the property, Jackson Real Estate Partners LLC, managed by Kenneth Slater, extended a 99-year residential lease agreement to Ellen and Kenneth Slater, who have homesteaded the estate as their primary home, according to tax rolls.
And there’s this in the “Just Sold” category. Recorded on Dec. 15, Paul Saunders, founder of James River Capital Corp., based in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia, and his wife, Victoria Saunders, a board member, former president and faculty member of the Innerwork Center, sold their 16,000-square-foot estate at 1020 S. Ocean Blvd. for $89.93 million in an off-market deal. The buyer is 122021Land Trust, with the trustee listed as James G.B. DeMartini III, chairman of the California accounting firm Seiler LLC.
According to public records, the Saunderses, who claimed homestead exemption on the property, paid $14.5 million for the nearly 2.2-acre lot in 2018. It features 200 feet of ocean frontage and a strip of land with a dock fronting the Intracoastal Waterway.
The Saunderses had a new five-bedroom house built on the lot, designed by the Benedict Bullock Group. Details include a golf-simulator room, outdoor putting green, an outdoor kitchen and pool, according to the architect’s website.
Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman represented the sellers. Christopher Leavitt and Ashley McIntosh, also agents with Douglas Elliman, handled the buyer’s side, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.
Shelly Newman, an agent with William Raveis South Florida, has the listing for the ocean-to-Intracoastal 1960s-era geodesic-dome compound at 1860 S. Ocean Blvd., owned by Jeanette Cohen as trustee of an irrevocable trust in the name of her husband, Stephen D. Cohen. Not quite as pricey as the other two properties, the Cohens’ estate, which they bought in 1978 for $620,000, is now priced at its land value at $27.5 million. Newman listed it for sale in late May 2021 for $29.9 million, but later dropped the price.
Newman, who handled both sides in an off-market sale for a recorded price of $14 million at 1800 S. Ocean Blvd. in May, is involved in two other property deals on the same block. She represented the seller at 1840 S. Ocean, with a price of $18 million, and the buyer of the estate at 1880 S. Ocean in a deal that closed just before Christmas for $19 million.
The estate at 1840 S. Ocean was owned by former Bear Stearns executive Robert Steinberg and his wife, Suzanne, who bought the property for $8.975 million in 2009.
The new owner of the property is 1840 South Ocean LLC, a Florida limited liability company with an address of 222 Lakeview Ave., Suite 1500, West Palm Beach, which is the address of attorney Maura Ziska. Lawrence Moens represented the buyer.
“Properties such as these in Manalapan are attractive to families looking to build a family estate,” Newman said. “Land is hard to find, and prices are so high in Palm Beach that a lot of people are choosing to live in Manalapan where they can build their family home on a larger piece of property. These are high elevation, ocean-to-Intracoastal, where people can enjoy sunrise and sunsets, boating and the beach with lots of property for children.”
Nearby in Ocean Ridge, Raymond Gregg Hill Sr. and his wife, Marsha, sold their 17,183-square-foot oceanfront estate at 6275 N. Ocean Blvd. to Simon Lincoln as trustee of the 6275 N. Ocean Land Trust for $27 million. The sale was recorded on Dec. 9.
According to its listing, the home, which was listed for sale in September at $29.9 million, features eight bedrooms that include two bunk rooms; an epicurean kitchen with a 15-foot kitchen island; an Alice-in Wonderland-like play area; media room; and a separate second-floor guest house. The Corcoran Group agents Candace and Phil Friis handled both sides of the deal.
The Hills bought the property in 2002 for $2.8 million from Ocean Ridge Development Company, with Frank E. McKinney as manager. The latest purchase was a record sale for Ocean Ridge, said Phil Friis, beating out the $19.879 million sale of 6161 N. Ocean Blvd., which sold in June 2018.
***
Morris Flancbaum, president of Colts Neck, New Jersey-based custom homebuilder Colts Neck Associates, and his wife, Susan Rizzuto, sold their waterfront home at 250 NE Fifth Ave., Boca Raton, for $22 million. The sale was recorded on Nov. 24. The buyer is 250 NE 5th Avenue Land Trust, with attorney Gregory S. Gefen as trustee, records show.
The seven-bedroom, 10,538-square-foot estate sits on a 1.62-acre lot and features marble floors, a dock, summer kitchen and wine room. Flancbaum and Rizzuto bought the home in 2019 for $16.5 million.
Jonathan Postma of Coldwell Banker/BR represented the seller. Nancy Gefen and Kathy Green of Signature International Premier Properties represented the buyer.
***
Newbond Holdings has acquired the newly updated 139-key Waterstone Resort & Marina, 999 E. Camino Real, Boca Raton, in an off-market deal, according to a news release.
Newbond Holdings is a real estate investment firm founded by Neil Luthra and Vann Avedisian.
“We were drawn to Boca Raton, and South Florida in general, by the unabated flow of families and businesses relocating to this market,” Luthra said. “The Waterstone is particularly well-positioned within its competitive set in the Boca Raton market. We are making a few select improvements to ensure that the Waterstone will be able to capture a disproportionate share of the future market growth.”
According to public records dated Dec. 7, the Waterstone was purchased for $37.875 million from BB Hotel Owner JV, managed by Matthew Lane, the entity that bought the property for $20.163 million in 1986. JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group represented the seller and worked on behalf of the buyer to originate the floating-rate acquisition financing.
***
So, what’s the deal with the high-end sales in South County these days?
Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of New York-based Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and the author of a series of market reports covering almost 40 U.S. markets for Douglas Elliman, has been keeping a chart on U.S. sales that have closed at more than $50 million for 20 years. In 2014, he noticed “a slew of listings for properties worth reasonably $5 [million] to $10 million, that all of a sudden were priced at $30 [million] and $40 million and not selling,” he said. “Other homeowners in the vicinity were also pricing their properties dramatically higher. I called it aspirational pricing. Then we started to see some sales, and it became a new submarket, and it hasn’t stopped.”
The majority of the transactions occur in the Manhattan borough and the Hamptons in New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach. “Florida, in general, has become the bigger market,” Miller said.
By mid-December 2021, he saw 39 U.S. sales over $50 million. “It was 29 in 2020, so that’s a significant jump,” he said.
He attributes this to a combination of factors. He reasons that “wealthy individuals have come to put more value in real estate, and that it is affordable in the context of their wealth.”
Additionally, Florida has become more attractive given its looser pandemic rules than those in New York and California, for example. Wall Street businesses are either moving to Florida or considering moving here. People from California and New York, which have high property, state and local taxes, are attracted to Florida and Texas because of the federal SALT tax (state and local tax deduction limits) that went into effect in 2018.
In terms of Manalapan, Miller has noticed that neighboring areas also have seen high-end sales.
“The sale of housing is much more about immediate gratification rather than long term. I think this phenomenon has a long runway in front of it, just because land is a prized asset and it’s tangible,” Miller said. “This segment of the market was created and redefined in the last eight years.”
***
Home prices are going up. But how long will this last? If you are a prospective home buyer and wondering about that, take a look at the Florida Atlantic University College of Business free website tool, called the Beracha and Johnson Housing Market Ranking, which was launched in October. Its interactive graphs show the degree of overpricing or underpricing per month in the nation’s 100 largest housing markets over the past 25 years. The goal is to help people make better-informed buying decisions.
“Being able to see historically how a housing market has performed can help potential buyers visualize where their housing market is in its current housing cycle,” said Ken H. Johnson, Ph.D., an economist with FAU Executive Education in the College of Business. Johnson launched the rankings with Eli Beracha, director of the Tibor and Sheila Hollo School of Real Estate at Florida International University.
“They will have a better understanding of the possibility of significant housing downturns or the potential for growth in home values.”
The site is at https://business.fau.edu/executive-education/housing-market-ranking/housing-top-100/index.php.
***
Partnering with BrandStar Studios, Manalapan resident Robert Matthew Van Winkle, known as Vanilla Ice, will be renovating homes on TV again. This time, he’ll use virtual, augmented and mixed-reality technology.
Van Winkle plans to find inspiration from high-end celebrity homes, and then, based on a realistic budget, re-create them. BrandStar’s Catapult Productions division will place Van Winkle and his team in a large LED screen that will display the “shell” of the space previously visited. At that point, the renovation will start appearing in augmented reality, with Van Winkle describing how elements of the upscale home can be re-created in a home at a reduced cost.
“I am passionate about helping homeowners achieve what they may have previously thought as impossible as it relates to home remodeling,” Van Winkle said. “The ability to use cutting-edge technology to literally walk our audience through the process of reproducing elements that may have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in these celebrity homes in an affordable manner really excites me and my team.”
To watch previews of The Vanilla Ice Home Show, tune into IG Live, Facebook Live and YouTube starting in the first quarter of 2022.
***
Walk of Recognition honorees are (l-r) Dan Guin and Jane Tyree for Boca Ballet Theatre; Terry Fedele; Robert K. Rollins Jr.; Edith Stein; George S. Brown Jr.; Lowell Van Vechten on behalf of her late husband, Jay Van Vechten; Tim Snow of the Snow Scholarship Fund. Photo provided
The Boca Raton Historical Society inducted its 2021 Walk of Recognition honorees in November: George S. Brown Jr., Robert K. Rollins Jr., Edith Stein, and the George Snow Scholarship Fund.
Brown, deputy city manager of Boca Raton and a former board member of the Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum, played a pivotal role in developing the partnership between the city and Florida Atlantic University.
Rollins, president of the Beacon Group insurance agency, has served on the board of the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District for 10 years. He’s also past president of the local Soccer Association and the Boca Raton Rotary Club and served on the board of directors of the FAU Foundation.
Stein is co-founder of the Martin & Edith Stein Family Foundation, which recently donated $5 million in support of a planned arts and innovation center in Mizner Park.
The George Snow Scholarship Fund, which helps students achieve their career goals through the pursuit of higher education, has awarded almost $16 million in scholarships since 1981 to nearly 2,400 Snow scholars.
Because the 2020 ceremony was postponed because of the pandemic, that year’s Walk of Recognition inductees were also honored: Terry Fedele; the late Jay Van Vechten; and Boca Ballet Theatre.
***
Florida Humanities, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in December awarded the Boca Raton Historical Society a $24,500 grant for general operating costs to help it recover from the economic impact of the pandemic. The NEH received $135 million from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
The state humanities councils, including Florida Humanities, each received a portion of the NEH award to support museums, archives, historic sites and other humanities-focused nonprofits. The Boca Raton Historical Society was one of 129 organizations in Florida that was awarded ARP funding totaling $1.88 million from Florida Humanities.
***
Paul Lykins of KW Innovations won the Boynton Beach Professionals’ recognition award, following a review process and vote by the management team of the Boynton Beach Professionals leads group. Awards are presented every other month.
“This award was created to honor the member who has done the most for the group and the Boynton Beach community,” said John Campanola, chairman of the group and an agent with New York Life.
“Paul has been tirelessly working to promote the group and all of its members. He is an ardent networker throughout Palm Beach County and especially Boynton Beach.”
For more information contact boyntonbeachprofessionals@gmail.com
***
GL Homes received the Delray Beach Housing Authority’s Making the Difference Award for its donation of bedding, household goods and furnishings to 18 formerly homeless families.
“Our programs provide working families a place to call home by providing families with rental assistance and affordable housing opportunities,” said Shirley Erazo, president and CEO of the authority. “We applaud GL Homes for their support and generous donation to these needy families.”
Send business news to Christine Davis at cdavis9797@gmail.com.
Comments