Spec builder buys waterfront teardown estate in Boca Raton for $24M

The estate of the late Patti Carpenter sold her house, a sprawling waterfront property in Boca Raton, for $23.5 million.

Spec builder Jeff Norman of JH Norman Construction confirmed he bought the home at 2408 East Maya Palm Drive in Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club last week. The deed has yet to be recorded. It listed for $41.5 million in November, and sold for $18 million below that asking price. He plans to raze the house and will likely build two spec homes on the 0.8-acre lot, he said. 

Carmen N. D’Angelo Jr., Joseph G. Liguori and Gerard P. Liguori of Premier Estate Properties represented both the buyer and the seller.

Carpenter died in August of last year, according to her obituary. She was a philanthropist and supporter of Boca Raton Regional Hospital, and the widow of DuPont heir William K. Carpenter. William K. Carpenter was the son of Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter and Margaretta Lammot DuPont, and the brother of Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr., the longtime owner of the Philadelphia Phillies. In 1985, Forbes estimated his wealth at $200 million. He died in 1987.

The Carpenters bought the Boca Raton estate in 1977 for $500,000, records show. Built in 1964, the 5,500-square-foot home includes six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and two half-bathrooms, according to the listing. It includes a guest house, pool, dock and 261 feet of waterfront. It was designed by Byron Simonson, a student of Palm Beach architects Maurice Fatio and Addison Mizner.

D’Angelo said that when the property was first listed, the intention was for a buyer to restore the existing home. Costs to restore are prohibitive, though, he said.

“The cost to restore a house is double new construction,” he said. “Codes have changed and you have to build to the new codes.”

Norman said he isn’t yet sure how he’ll break up the lots, but expects to build two homes priced at about $30 million, each. He will likely break ground in the next six to eight months, he said.

“There was just no merit to what was left. The market is brutally honest,” said Norman, who swooped in after a number of other potential deals fell through. “The second, third, fourth or tenth guy in gets the best deal.”

Norman also sold a waterfront spec home in Boca Raton last month for $14.4 million. Newly constructed houses are in high demand, D’Angelo said. He described a summer of “a lot of musical chairs of people moving around buying new homes.”Spec homes are in particularly high demand in Boca Raton’s Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club. Last month, Steve and Scott Dingle of SRD Building sold a spec home for $16.2 million.