Bray Family Trust Sells Highland Park Mansion

A family of high-profile real estate investors best known for flipping Bernie Madoff’s former Palm Beach home sold a century-old mansion in Dallas.

The Bray Family Trust sold the 1928 home at 4225 Beverly Drive in Highland Park on June 5 to Pony Huff GP LLC, an entity managed by Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty agent Bradley Huff, public records show. The final sale price is undisclosed, but it was last asking $12.8 million, according to online listing portals.

The list price, which works out to about $1,200 per square foot for the 10,612-square-foot home, put the property in fifth place on the Houston Association of Realtors’ list of the top 10 most expensive new listings in Texas last month. Allie Beth Allman & Associates agent KJ Murphy represented the home, according to HAR. It sold in less than a month after listing on May 19.

By the time the Bray family bought the property in 2021, when it was asking $7.6 million, builder Nickey Oates and interior designer Debra Stewart had remodeled it with high-end appliances and an elevator, according to a Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s blog post. It’s not clear whether the Brays further renovated the property during their ownership. Huff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The property boasts two laundry rooms, a wine cellar and a four-car garage, as well as proximity to luxury retail complex Highland Park Village.

The Bray family includes Bennie Bray, a lead investor in the bakery company that supplies Subway, and Samuel Chantilis, a Dallas physician. Bennie Bray and his wife Stephanie Chantilis Bray, acting as co-trustees of the Bray Family Trust, famously bought Bernie Madoff’s former home at 410 North Lake Way in Palm Beach for $5.7 million in 2010 and sold it for $9 million after extensive renovations three years later. The family also bought a unit in the Kirkland House condominium at 101 Worth Avenue in Palm Beach for $15 million in 2022, setting a sale price record for the development, and purchased a townhome at 218 Brazilian Avenue for $13.9 million the following year.

Recent sales on Beverly Drive include the 2001 Mediterranean-style home at 3600 Beverly Drive, which former finance and oil executive Lee Edgar Mikles and his wife Lori Mikles sold to Michael and Stacy Watson in late April after asking $11.5 million, and the contemporary home at 4208 Beverly Drive, which accused fraudster Daniel Chu sold in March after asking $9 million.