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An oceanfront custom home is under construction at 1040 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan. The home includes 23,795 square feet and a guest house. Photo by Jerry Lower

 

By Christine Davis

Waterfront building in Manalapan is booming, big time.
“Oh, my! We are so excited!” said Lisa Petersen, Manalapan’s town clerk. “Right now, there are eight new houses under way in some form or another.
“I haven’t seen anything like this in the eight years that I’ve worked for Manalapan. I’d be scared to guess why. Maybe people are feeling more flush?”
There’s good reason for excitement. When put in perspective, there are 58 single-family homes on the ocean, and seven of those eight new homes are oceanfront.
“Manalapan is on fire,” said Stuart Lepera, managing member of Lands End Developers, the company contracted to do three of these waterfront homes. “It’s active like Palm Beach. Anything on the water is alive and anything else is dead,” he added.
He started working on the Italian-style home at 1680 S. Ocean about two months ago for Dr. Peter Bonutti. It will have 24,000 square feet, a boathouse and a tunnel. A home he will be building at 1790 S. Ocean is approved and will soon be permitted.
A new home he’s building on the Intracoastal Waterway, at 1675 Land’s End, was started six months ago and will have 9,000 square feet.
Another oceanfront project worth noting is at 1340 S. Ocean, where he’s building a guesthouse, a tennis court and a 13,000-square-foot addition to the existing house.
Waterfront has limited availability, he said, and, right now, buyers can get more value for their dollar. “The price-per-foot has not come down drastically — there’s no recession on materials — but the value of the land has come down, as well as the cost of labor.”
Mark Pulte, owner of Mark Timothy Inc., who has the contracts for four Manalapan oceanfront homes, explains it this way: “In the last two years, you could buy a lot on the ocean and build a home, and the price would be the same as if you’d purchased an existing home on the ocean.”
In this economic downturn, however, these custom homes are no less plush. No belt tightening going on here, he said. “A couple of these houses have tennis courts. One has a sports court. They all have lots of amenities. One has a basement. All have elevators. None has a theater room, but they all have a multipurpose room, which combines a family room with a theater room.”
The home Pulte is building at 700 S. Ocean is a Georgian-style with 12,000 square feet. The Georgian-style home at 750 S. Ocean has 14,000 square feet. The French-style home at 800 S. Ocean is approved and will soon be permitted. It will have 21,000 square feet and, finally, a South Pacific-style home at 1780 S. Ocean will have 12,000 square feet. They range in price from $14 million to $29 million.
The last custom home at 1040 S. Ocean, built by Casto Homes in Juno Beach, is 23,795-square-feet and has a guest house.
Randy Ely, a Realtor with the Corcoran Group who focuses on real estate from Manalapan to Highland Beach, sold two of these oceanfront properties in the last year, and offers his input: “The minimum beachfront footage in Manalapan is 150 feet and in Delray Beach and Gulfstream it’s 100 feet. In Delray Beach, rule of thumb is $60,000 per foot of ocean frontage, which comes out to $6 million for the purchase price. In Manalapan, purchase price for oceanfront is $6 [million] to $7 million. There’s better value in Manalapan. You are getting a bigger lot for the same amount of money, and buyers have realized that,” he said.
Developer Frank McKinney was on the selling side last year — he sold three properties. “Overall, most of these oceanfront buyers are end users. If you have end users coming in, they will put their head on the pillow and that’s a nice shift. They are investing in an emotional return,” he said. “One of the buyers of my properties bought two properties at one time. That’s a big deal.”
Although the commodity — in this case, oceanfront real estate — has been devalued, it’s still blue chip, he said, and the ultra-wealthy recognize the amenities.                                 

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