Chicago investor’s profitable year in Palm Beach

Chicago developer and real estate investor Fred Latsko made a tidy $4 million profit in an off-market sale of a Palm Beach mansion he bought a year ago, according to Linda Gary, a broker who handled both sides of the transaction.

The property wraps around the southwestern tip of Everglades Island, a narrow strip of land off of Palm Beach on the Intracoastal Waterway, with 380 feet of private waterfront.

Latsko sold the four-bedroom, 7,500-square-foot house and land to fellow Illinoisan Thomas Tisbo, chief executive of lawn-and-garden manufacturer Suncast Corp., for $17.5 million.

Latsko purchased the property through three limited liability companies last April for $13.5 million with plans to tear down the house and build anew, Gary said.

“He got the demolition permit from the town but it was just a question of timing; he couldn’t pass up the offer, it was too good,” Gary told The Real Deal. The new owners also plan to tear down the house.

Latsko, who owns about 50 retail properties on Chicago’s North Side, recently sold the Lululemon Athletica building in the Gold Coast he co-owned for $21 million, fetching more than $7,000 per square foot, a Chicago record for commercial real estate, according to local media.

Latsko made headlines when a stack of foreclosures pushed him to the edge of bankruptcy. He made good on outstanding loans by selling about 40 Chicago properties, paintings and antique cars, restructuring debt and selling another Gold Coast property housing the Barneys retailer to an affiliate of Israeli conglomerate IDB Group for $117 million in 2011. –Emily Schmall