Private equity chief flips non-waterfront Palm Beach estate for record $51M

A tech private equity boss flipped a non-waterfront estate in Palm Beach for $51 million, marking a record for dry properties that rivals the price for oceanfront compounds.

Records show RH Real Estate Organization, a Delaware LLC, sold the home at 241 Jungle Road to 241 Aurora Trust, with attorney Joel Patrick Erb signing as trustee. Erb practices at Sacramento-based Pioneer Law Group. The address listed for the buyer is for the Los Angeles office of Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a business management firm that represents celebrities and other high net worth individuals. The true buyer is unknown.

Rob Heyvaert signed the deed for RH Real Estate Organization, and the address listed on the document is for the 54 Bond Street penthouse in New York City he bought for $13.5 million in 2011, according to Curbed.

Heyvaert is a founder and managing partner of Motive Partners, a New York-based technology-focused private equity firm. According to Crunchbase, Motive Partners has raised more than $3 billion for its investment funds.

Prior to Motive Partners, he founded two other companies, Cimad Consultants and Capco. He sold Cimad Consultants to Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM in 1998, and in 2011 sold Capco to FIS, a global fintech conglomerate based in Jacksonville. Heyvaert also sits on the board of FNZ Group and InvestCloud, according to his LinkedIn.

Records show he bought the estate for $35.8 million last year. The nearly 1-acre property includes a 10,200-square-foot, three-bedroom mansion and a two-bedroom guest house, according to property records and the Palm Beach Daily News. The houses have a total of five bathrooms and four half-bathrooms, records show.

Jim Held and Kenn Karakul, a commissioner on the Palm Beach Architectural Commission, had purchased the property for $7.9 million in 2014 and finished construction in 2016, records show. It was honored with an award for excellence by the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Daily News reported.

Prices for non-waterfront homes in Palm Beach have surged in recent years, in part because of the pandemic-induced migration of wealthy buyers. New construction is preferred by buyers, brokers say.

Earlier this month, a spec mansion by homebuilder Courchene Development, also on Jungle Road, sold for $32 million. In November, the CEO of a wealth management firm sold a non-waterfront property in Palm Beach for $21.3 million.

As an alternative to new construction or spec homes, buyers are also opting to purchase lots and teardowns to build their own homes. Last month, a Boston real estate executive sold a non-waterfront lot for $10.3 million, after buying it for $5.3 million last year.