Trending
Member of billionaire Collier family buys Palm Beach penthouse
Unit sold at nearly 25% price cut; buyer owns another unit in the building
A member of the billionaire Collier family purchased a penthouse in Palm Beach, adding to his holdings in the tony town.
Barron G. Collier II paid $8 million for penthouse C at 315 South Lake Drive, records show. Richard and Susan Robbins sold the 2,705-square-foot, three-bedroom unit at Southlake. The six-story Art Deco building, constructed in 1969, features a full-time doorman, manager and pool.
Collier, a developer in Palm Beach, paid about $3,000 per square foot for the penthouse. Collier’s grandfather was Barron Gift Collier, who developed large swaths of land on Florida’s west coast. Collier County is named after him. The Collier family’s net worth was pegged at $2.3 billion in 2015, according to Forbes’ ranking of America’s richest families.
Christine Gibbons with Sotheby’s International Realty represented Collier in the condo purchase, according to the listing. Tom Shaw, also with Sotheby’s, represented the sellers. The unit was on the market for $10.5 million, which means it sold for a nearly 25 percent price cut. Price reductions are increasingly common across South Florida, as sellers adjust to the current market.
The penthouse is the second unit that Collier has acquired in the building. Records show he paid about $1.7 million for an 1,800-square-foot unit on the third floor in 2016.
Though Palm Beach is known for its waterfront mansions, high-profile buyers have recently set their sights on condos.
This month, developer Todd Michael Glaser and his partners flipped a penthouse atop the Tiffany & Co. building on Worth Avenue to car dealership mogul Terry Taylor for $18 million. The sale came 10 months after they bought the raw unit for $15.5 million.
Also this month, members of the prominent Simkins family paid about $9 million, or about $2,900 per square foot, for an oceanfront condo at 2100 South Ocean Boulevard Palm Beach, nearly three times its last sale price six years ago.
In December, billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, paid a Palm Beach record of $23.8 million for the penthouse at 110 Sunset Avenue.
Still, year-over-year sales are on the decline. In the first quarter, condo sales fell 35 percent to 77 closings in Palm Beach, according to Douglas Elliman’s reports. The median price of condos rose 66 percent to $1.5 million, and inventory ballooned to 160 listings, up 146 percent.