Former ambassador to Austria buys North Palm Beach house for $6M

A former ambassador to Austria under President George W. Bush bought a North Palm Beach house for $6 million.

Under a trust in her name, Susan Rasinski McCaw bought the 5,000-square-foot house at 12184 West End in Lost Tree Village, according to records.

Paul D. Kaneb Jr. and his wife, Catherine, sold the house. The Kanebs paid $1.2 million for the property in 2004 and built the house in 2009, records show. It has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a two-car garage and sits on half an acre, according to an online listing.

Paul Kaneb co-founded K2 Realty with James Kenny in 2003 to sell houses in Lost Tree Village. Both executives had the listing for the house, according to an online listing. Kaneb worked in the petroleum and energy trading business for 10 years and in private banking and finance for three years before co-founding K2 Realty, according to Lost Tree Village’s website.

In 1998, McCaw married Craig McCaw, a mobile phone pioneer who sold McCaw Cellular Communications in 1994 to AT&T for $12.6 billion, according to Forbes. He also led telecommunications companies Nextel and Clearwire. Forbes currently pegs his net worth at $1.8 billion.

Susan McCaw was appointed ambassador in 2005 and left the position in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of State’s website. She is based in Seattle and is president of private investment firm SRM Capital Investments, according to her LinkedIn. Past roles include serving as president of private investment firm COM Investments, and as a principal at San Francisco-based investment bank Robertson Stephens & Co. She is a philanthropist with multiple board seats.

Lost Tree Village, a 450-acre community along the Atlantic Ocean and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in North Palm Beach, has attracted a number of big ticket deals lately. The CEO of cable giant Comcast pulled the plug on his North Palm Beach condo for $5.5 million. And financial executive bought a home in North Palm Beach for $5 million.