Cliff Fischer buys oceanfront Palm Beach penthouse for $15M

The founder of Dallas-based Fischer & Co. bought an oceanfront Palm Beach penthouse for $15 million, his third condo purchase in the area.

Records show Clifford and Rhonda Fischer bought unit PH-1 of One Royal Palm Way, a condo building at 100 Royal Palm Way, from a Delaware LLC named for the address. The true seller is unknown.

Linda Olsson of Linda R. Olsson represented both the buyers and the seller.

Fischer founded his namesake commercial real estate tenant representation firm in 1985, which counts FedEx, Dollar General and IBM among its clients. He started the company with his ex-wife Gail Fischer, and the pair split ownership as part of their August 2019 divorce settlement. Litigation continued following the divorce, including allegations by Fischer & Co. that Gail Fischer withdrew $5 million of company funds in a breach of fiduciary duty. The court sided with Cliff Fischer and the company, dismissing Gail Fischer’s civil suit in April 2021.

Cliff Fischer married Rhonda Fischer in December 2019. She is the widow of Calvin Howard Wilkins, the former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands under George W. Bush.

The Fischers’ new penthouse spans 2,870 square feet, with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, records show. The unit’s defining feature is a 3,000-square-foot wraparound terrace facing the oceanfront, according to the listing.

The previous owners bought the condo, built in 1969, in 2000 for $2.7 million, records show. The listing states it was renovated, however Olsson declined to comment on the work completed.

Rhonda and Clifford Fischer also own a condo in the Bristol in West Palm Beach. They bought the three-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,826-square-foot unit in 2021 for $7.7 million, according to records.

Property records also show Cliff Fischer independently owns a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in the President in Palm Beach. He bought the unit with Gail Fischer in 2011 for $220,000. She was removed from the deed in 2019.

Condos represent a smaller piece of the Palm Beach residential market, which is dominated by the island’s luxury single-family homes. Pandemic-triggered migration to Palm Beach brought unprecedented demand and led to surging prices during the last two years, a trend that has just begun to simmer.

According to Olsson, the Palm Beach condo market remains strong. Nancy Shevell McCartney, Paul McCartney’s wife, sold her late father’s condo for $13.5 million in June. That same month, developer Todd Glaser and his partners bought the Tiffany condo on Worth Avenue for $15.5 million with plans to flip the unit. Terry Taylor, the largest private auto dealership owner in the nation, bought a Palm Beach condo for $7.5 million in May.