Tiny Palm Beach apartment building sells for more than $900,000 per unit

Less is apparently more in Palm Beach, where an oceanfront apartment building with only six units just traded for $5.6 million.

Originally built in 1940, the two-story Palm Beach Ocean View Apartments building is located on a choice piece of land at 106 Hammon Avenue, separated from the beach only by South Ocean Boulevard.

Owners with grand plans for redevelopment of the property have come and gone: in the mid 2000s, a company called Sirenity Investors wanted to convert the then 11-unit building into four luxe condos with two bedrooms and two bathrooms each.

But a “shortfall” in the owner’s loan commitment for the property caused it to go up for sale, according to a LoopNet listing for the property in 2009, and those plans evaporated when Equity Bank took control in 2010.

The most recent owners, a company affiliated with Janet and J.J. Cafaro, successfully converted the building’s 11 units into six last year following a total gut renovation.

J.J. Cafaro is an Ohio developer that ran into trouble with the federal government in 2002, according to published reports, when he pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe an Ohio congressman. He again pleaded guilty several years later for not disclosing a $10,000 loan to his daughter’s congressional campaign.

He and his wife paid $2.6 million to buy the property off Equity Bank in 2011, according to county records.

Now, the couple has sold the building to a company controlled by Bernard Pierre-Louis of Davie for roughly $933,333 per unit.

Marcus & Millichap’s Daniel Cunningham and Derek R. Gibbs, who represented both the buyer and seller, announced the deal Thursday.

“Palm Beach Ocean View Apartments is one of only a handful of apartment buildings on the entire island,” Cunningham said in the announcement. “This was a rare opportunity to acquire a fully-renovated, income producing property with ocean views and tremendous long-term value.”