Add another piece of evidence to the growing pile that says Palm Beach’s red-hot real estate market continues to sizzle on the high end — the very high end, in this case.
The most expensive property ever listed on the island — a furnished seaside mansion developed on speculation and priced at $140 million — has landed under contract, according to a listing updated Monday in the local multiple listing service.
The just-completed contemporary-style residence at 535 N. County Road was in the MLS for only a month before the status of the listing was changed to “pending”on Monday.
The property’s stratospheric asking price set an MLS record for a single-family property when it entered the market Jan. 8.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates has the listing, which identifies him as having an “investment interest” in the property. The house is owned by an entity linked to developer Mark Pulte of Mark Timothy Inc. Pulte’s company paid a recorded $37 million for the lot at No. 535 in 2018 and built the mansion.
Moens couldn’t be reached, and Pulte has never responded to phone messages left for him by the Palm Beach Daily News.
The buyer who has the property under contract worked with New York City broker Ryan Serhhant of Serhant in collaboration with agent Christopher Leavitt of Douglas Elliman Real Estate’s Palm Beach brokerage, a spokeswoman for Serhant told the Palm Beach Daily News in an email. Leavitt declined to comment.
Facing 150 feet of shoreline, the house was built on 2 acres on the North End. The lot was one of three carved from a larger estate that former President Donald Trump sold in 2008 — eight years before his election — for $95 million, the price recorded in courthouse records.
The house and its separate guest house have a total of nine bedrooms and 21,066 square feet of living space, inside and out, of which 15,350 is under air conditioning, the listing shows
Designed by architect William M. Boyle of Boyle Architecture, the new house’s exterior features crisp lines, a white-stucco exterior, coral Key stone details and large expanses of glass. The east side of the two-story main residence is roughly L-shaped, with many of the rooms facing an expansive oceanfront swimming pool. The separate one-story guesthouse on the west side of the property has its own pool.
Marc-Michaels Interior Design of Winter Park and Boca Raton decorated the house.
Moens handled both sides of the 2018 lot sale, just as he did when the two adjacent lots sold.
A search this week showed 40 single-family properties are under contract in the MLS, including the $140 million listing and six other properties priced at $20 million or more. Of the latter, two lakefront listings were marked pending on Monday. Both are listed by Moens — a house at 1020 N. Lake Way with a price of $26.85 million and another at 1040 N. Lake Way, priced at $24.95 million.
The past several weeks have seen two house sales vault the $40 million mark in Palm Beach, where a rush of sales has been ongoing since the late spring, partly in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Buyers have told real estate agents they were seeking a haven where they could isolate in a warm-weather climate in homes with back yards and open-air loggias. But they have also been drawn by the town’s natural beauty, security and tax advantages.
At the tail end of December, the lakefront mansion built by the late Kathleen DuRoss Ford at 300 N. Lake Way sold for a recorded $55.15 millon, the most expensive MLS-listed property to change hands in Palm Beach in nearly four years, an online search showed. Moens had the listing and broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate represented the buyers, David and Constance Littman.
Less than a month later, another lakefront house in Palm Beach sold for a recorded $40.67 million at 1330 S. Ocean Blvd. That one was sold by a Swiss entity controlled by European businessman Gerald Herz and wife Isabelle and bought by a Delaware-registered limited liability company. Linda A. Gary of Linda Gary Real Estate was the listing broker opposite Moens.
