Billionaire Herbert Wertheim dropped $18.9 million on a flipped, furnished townhouse in Palm Beach.
Records show Wertheim bought the townhouse at 219 Brazilian Avenue from an LLC named for the address. The seller is hidden.
Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate brought the buyer, and Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties represented the seller.
Wertheim is a billionaire inventor, the son of Jewish immigrants who fled Nazi Germany to Hollywood, Forbes reported in a 2019 profile. An optometrist by training, Wertheim founded Brain Power, the world’s largest manufacturer of optic tints that holds more than 100 patents and copyrights. Forbes estimates his net worth at $4.4 billion.
Wertheim and his wife, Nicole Wertheim, both have namesake colleges at Florida International University: the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences. Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville also carries his name.
Records show the sellers of the Brazilian Avenue townhouse bought it for $18.6 million in May. The four-bedroom, five-bathroom, one half-bathroom home spans 6,000 square feet, according to the listing and records. The home also includes an elevator, pool, spa, and summer kitchen, the listing shows.
The latest sale includes $1 million of furniture designed by Marc Michaels, a Winter Park-based interior designer, according to the listing.
Furnished homes perform well in South Florida’s luxury market. Buyers don’t want to wait for delays in the supply chain to make their homes livable.
The pandemic supercharged the South Florida market, particularly in Palm Beach. Sales volume is dropping as the market cools, but the price growth of the last three years appears to be sticking.
A number of townhouses have traded in recent weeks. A hedge funder with a $100 million portfolio of New England vacation properties bought a townhouse, also on Brazilian Avenue, for $12 million this month. The adjoining townhouse also sold, for $8.3 million, and was immediately relisted for $16 million.
In January, financier Steven Hudson flipped his townhouse at 466 South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach for $26.7 million; and on the northern part of the island, real estate investor Irwin Ackerman and his wife, Mary Ackerman, sold their home for $34.9 million.