British investor Kevin Flaherty sold a waterfront spec home in Miami Beach’s Venetian Islands for $23.9 million.
Records show Venetian 1417 LP, an affiliate of Flaherty’s Savile Bay Properties, sold the house at 1417 North Venetian Way to the 1417 San Marco Trust, managed by local attorney Alexandros Haralambides. The true buyer is unknown.
Julian Johnston of the Corcoran Group represented both the buyer and the seller. He confirmed the buyer is European and plans to use the home seasonally.
“We’re seeing a lot of Europeans right now,” he said, noting Russia’s war in Ukraine as a factor driving migration.
Flaherty partnered with Sebastian Stoecker to found Savile Bay Properties, a spec development firm focused on the Miami waterfront market. Flaherty was previously head of structured product syndicate for Deutsche Bank in Europe, Asia and Australia, LinkedIn shows. Stoecker was formerly director of fixed income at Credit Suisse.
Savile Bay’s other projects include the 2021 sale of a waterfront Venetian Islands spec house for $13.5 million. In 2020, the firm sold a waterfront Venetian Islands lot to former-F1 driver and spec developer Eddie Irvine for $5.1 million.
Flaherty’s entity bought the 0.3-acre North Venetian Way property for $5.1 million in 2017, records show. He completed the 7,600-square-foot Max Strang-designed house last year, according to property records. It has six bedrooms, six bathrooms, one half-bathroom, a pool and spans 104 feet of waterfront, the listing shows.
Flaherty listed the home for $30 million in 2022, and dropped the price to $27.5 million in December, Redfin shows.
“We put it out there to see what the market would pay,” Johnston said of testing pricing for the mansion. In March, “PayPal Mafia” member David Sacks sold his Venetian Islands house for $22.5 million.
Many buyers have been watching the market from the sidelines, waiting to see if the sales slowdown will bring down prices, Johnston said. But prices have held firm, unlike luxury markets in the rest of the U.S.
“Miami itself is a little immune from what’s going on in the rest of the country,” he said. “Interest rates don’t really affect these buyers because they don’t get loans.”