In a regular feature, The Real Deal will take a look inside South Florida’s priciest, biggest and most interesting real estate deals.
The fifth and final penthouse at One Thousand Ocean, a luxury condominium in Boca Raton that dates back seven years, closed June 4, capping off a whirlwind sales streak at the building and a substantial marketing campaign that saved a project from the previous boom from going belly-up.
Known as “The Shore,” the unit sold to an undisclosed buyer for $11.7 million, or $1,547 per square foot, the developer, LXR Luxury Resorts & Hotels, whose New York-based parent company is an affiliate of Blackstone Group, said. It is the third largest condo sale in Palm Beach County history and an important milestone for One Thousand Ocean, a project that was nearly killed by the real estate crash and had only closed on one unit by February 2010.
Starting March 4, four of project’s penthouses and a two-story “beach villa” townhouse, sold in 90 days. The Shore sale alone represented nearly a third of the three-month period’s $38 million in sales.
The 7,550-square-foot condo with 4,591 square feet of wraparound terrace space features a private elevator lobby, glass walls, an outdoor kitchen, a private cabana and three-car garage, according to LXR.
The sale of One Thousand Ocean’s final penthouse was the pinnacle of an elaborate marketing campaign launched by Jamie Telchin, a longtime Boca Raton resident and the luxury properties developer for New York-based Luxury Resort, who took control of marketing the building in January 2009 after a promotion.
The building was featured twice on HGTV’s hit reality series “Selling New York,” and was the backdrop of several scenes from the Hollywood action thriller “Parker” starring Jennifer Lopez and Jason Statham.
Telchin and his team also paired up with other luxury retailers to showcase high-priced jewelry, furniture and automobiles in model units designed by the likes of Venus Williams’ V*Starr Interiors, events that drew several hundred people, all of whom were targeted later in e-mail blasts, Telchin told The Real Deal.
“I had to manage for years expectations from our investors, from our other residents, in terms of where we were going to be price-wise, and ultimately be in a position to weather the storm of the market, and not drop prices or have fire sales,” Telchin said.
Telchin’s team also took out ads with Google’s international version of AdSense and in international magazines, he said. The buyer mix has included people from the Northeast and South Florida, Peru, Brazil, London, Canada, the Ukraine and Russia, Telchin said.
“To make those decisions and to see those decisions pan out with an overwhelming amount of sales activity on penthouses that, quite frankly, we couldn’t sell for the last couple of years, and to only be left with two units going into the summer is really beyond my expectations,” he said.
The penthouse sales streak at One Thousand Ocean began in March, when a penthouse sold for $5.8 million, or $1,415 per square foot.
Boca Raton attorney and real estate investor Richard A. Murdoch’s Sea Villa LLC next purchased the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bathroom beach villa property for $5.2 million. A second penthouse, 5,652-square foot unit known as “The Beach,” sold for approximately $8.7 million.
At the end of May, a 4,628-square-foot penthouse at the oceanfront condominium known as “The Sky” sold to an undisclosed buyer for $7 million.
Palm Beach County’s latest record was set three weeks ago in a $17.45 million transaction for a 5,798-square-foot penthouse at Il Lugano Palm Beach, followed by $11.95 million for a condo and cabana at Two North Breakers Row in Palm Beach.