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Palm Beach’s most expensive oceanfront homes are lingering on the market

For more than a century, ever since Standard Oil founder Henry Flagler put up a 55-room Beaux-Arts mansion to spend his winters, Palm Beach has had a reputation for luxury real estate.

Today, a nine-bedroom, newly constructed home on the market for $74 million shows the city is as popular as ever with the richest of the rich.

Still, the eight-figure listing is far off the Palm Beach record, set three years ago when Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev forked over $95 million for Donald Trump’s beachfront luxury mansion outfitted with 24-karat gold fixtures.

Prices started climbing about 18 months ago as inventory began to tighten, according to Douglas Elliman’s quarterly report provided by Miller Samuel. The median sale price last year jumped by a little more than half, to $8 million.

“Palm Beach has a major shortage of high-end oceanfront listings,” said Dana Koch of Corcoran, who is marketing the No. 2 listing with his partner, Paulette Koch. “Oceanfront real estate in Palm Beach is like gold.”
But a long wait for a well-heeled buyer is typical of all the top homes. All of the five priciest listings have spent at least 18 months on the market.

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At $74 million, the home at 1220 South Ocean Boulevard has firmly held its position as the No.1 listing since it hit the market in September 2011. The 27,355-square-foot mansion, atop a stately 2.5 acres along the water, is being handled by Corcoran’s Jim McCann.

McCann is also marketing the third priciest listing, at 101 El Bravo Way; the asking price for the 21,263-square-foot, 17-room Mediterranean-style home is $37.5 million.

Just a block away is 89 Middle Road, a 4.3-acre oceanfront estate listed for $59 million with Corcoran and Brown Harris Stevens. Billionaire television mogul John Kluge donated his 23,000-square-foot, four-building compound to Columbia University before his death at age 95 in 2010. It hit the market in June 2011, but the price hasn’t budged, with the expectation it can fetch its high asking price.

“There is [now] a lot of upward momentum in the Palm Beach market,” Koch said. “It kind of feels like 2008 again.”

Sotheby’s has the No. 4 listing, at 1275 South Ocean Boulevard, with an ask of $34.9 million. The 13,278-square-foot, seven-bedroom home hit the market at $38 million and is the only one on the property A-list to drop in price.

The least expensive of the bunch, the $28.9 million El Vedado Road home, came on the market in April 2010 for $27.5 million; Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate is the broker.