Widow of Eastdil’s founder buys waterfront Miami Beach spec home

Her husband Ben Lambert died Jan. 30

Linda Lambert with James Curnin and 6445 Allison Road (Getty, Clara Homes)
Linda Lambert with James Curnin and 6445 Allison Road (Getty, Clara Homes)

Linda Lambert, whose husband, Eastdil Secured founder Ben Lambert recently died, is relocating to a waterfront Miami Beach spec home that she just bought.

Property records show developer James Curnin’s Clara Homes Allison LLC sold the six-bedroom, nine-bathroom house on Allison Island for $13 million.

Oliver Lloyd

Oliver Lloyd

The 7,000-square-foot home sits on a 16,200-square-foot lot with 75 feet of waterfront. Oliver Lloyd of Douglas Elliman represented the buyer and seller. The buyer is permanently relocating to Miami Beach, according to a spokesperson for Elliman.

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Curnin paid $7.3 million for the property in 2019 and split the lot in two. The house next door is on the market for $15.3 million with Lloyd. Curnin plans to complete that property later this month, the Elliman spokesperson said.

There has been a surge in waterfront single-family home sales in Miami Beach over the past few months. In December, Curnin paid $9.5 million for a teardown on Miami Beach’s Venetian Islands, with plans to build a new house on the waterfront property.

Over the summer, the Lamberts sold their three-bedroom, 3,592-square-foot condo at Oceanside on Fisher Island for nearly $5 million. The buyers were Joe Dimartini, CEO of Zelis Payments, and his wife Nicole.

Ben Lambert, who died at 82 on Jan. 30, founded the New York-based investment sales brokerage Eastdil Secured in 1967. He oversaw the sale of landmark properties such as the General Motors Building in New York City and Chicago’s Willis Tower. Eastdil, which partnered with Nomura Securities in the 1980s, operated as a subsidiary of Wells Fargo between 1999 and 2019, until Lambert and his management team led a buyout of the company, along with Guggenheim Investments and Singapore sovereign-wealth fund Temasek Holdings.