The mysterious buyer behind Faena House’s incredible $60 million penthouse sale has been revealed: Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund manager and recent luxury real estate connoisseur.
Griffin, the CEO of investment company Citadel, has reportedly dropped just under $300 million on properties in Chicago, New York and Miami Beach over the last two years.
His purchases include entire floors of residential buildings at Chicago’s Waldorf Astoria hotel and New York’s 220 Central Park South, the New York Times reported.
On top of that, he’s being credited as the buyer of Faena House’s $60 million penthouse, which broke all residential records in Miami when it closed two weeks ago. The massive 12,500-square-foot unit in Miami Beach was purchased through an LLC registered in Delaware, which has notoriously opaque public records laws. No financing was recorded for the deal, meaning no mortgage signatures leading back to the true buyer.
But, a source close to the deal leaked his identity to the New York Times, according to an article the newspaper published Saturday. Griffin had the penthouse under contract for over a year, and he paid $10 million more than its asking price.
Court filings show that Griffin, who is in the midst of a divorce, rakes in $68.5 million a month after taxes, according to the Times.
The Faena sale blew past Miami’s record price for a condo unit, which was set by a $27.5 million unit in Miami Beach’s Continuum in December. It even beat the record price for a single-family home that previously belonged to the $47 million home at 3 Indian Creek Island Road. [New York Times] — Sean Stewart-Muniz