Fort Lauderdale mansion headed for auction with a $19.5M minimum bid

The owner of a 27-room waterfront mansion in the Las Olas Isles area of Fort Lauderdale will offer the residence for sale at an auction on Thursday.

The minimum bid has been set at $19.5 million, and winning bidder can pay 25 percent of the price in the digital currency bitcoin.

According to the builder of the three-year-old mansion in Las Olas Isles, its construction cost in today’s dollars would be about $25 million, or 22 percent above the minimum bid.

Fisher Auction Company will conduct the auction starting at 11 a.m. Thursday on the premises of the mansion at 534 Bontona Avenue in Fort Lauderdale, called Bella Fortuna.

Fisher will conduct the auction in cooperation with the listing agent for residence, Katrina Campins, an agent of brokerage firm Trump International Realty who was a cast member in the first season of “The Apprentice,” the NBC reality television show that starred Donald Trump.

The current owner built the mansion in 2015 on the site of a house purchased from the family of the late H. Wayne Huizenga.

Following demolition of the Huizenga house, the land was raised by eight feet, putting the ground floor of Bella Fortuna 10 feet above sea level.

Marker Construction built the mansion, which has more than 17,000 square feet of space. Bella Fortuna features custom marble throughout the property, two fireplaces, two home offices, an elevator, hand-painted Portuguese wall tiles, a mahogany butler pantry, a hidden “panic room,” a heated swimming pool and a five-hole putting green that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway.

The mansion also has faux painted ceilings by the late Leonard Pardon, who was appointed by Queen Elizabeth to do restorative painting at Buckingham Palace.

Bella Fortuna has won more than a dozen awards including the prestigious Addison Mizner award from the Institute of Classical Architecture. – Mike Seemuth