Oil heiress Jean Christine Thompson sold an oceanfront estate in Manalapan for $15.6 million, as luxury activity picks up in the tony enclave.
Thompson’s Dos Hermanas LLC sold the mansion at 3090 South Ocean Boulevard to entrepreneur Anthony Marlowe, One Sotheby’s International Realty agents Madison Collum and Sandra Tagliamonte confirmed. They represented both the buyer and the seller in the deal, and declined to comment on Thompson’s identity.
Marlowe is CEO of Miami-based MCI, a holding company that owns information technology, marketing and software firms, its website shows.
Thompson is the daughter of late Texas oil magnate James Cleo Thompson Jr., who founded Thompson Petroleum with his father in the 1950s, according to published reports. A 2022 Forbes story describes her as “a health nut with a passion for real estate” and the singular head of a billion-dollar family office and property portfolio. She founded the luxury vacation rental company Amásé Stays, which owns luxury homes in Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Belize and the Bahamas, its website shows.
She previously rented out the Manalapan mansion as a vacation rental, according to the agents. Thompson bought the oceanfront compound in 2017 for $11.5 million, records show. Built in 2000 on 1.7 acres, the 8,500-square-foot mansion has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and one half-bathroom, according to property records. The estate spans 150 feet of oceanfront and 150 feet of the Intracoastal Waterway. The oceanfront side has a beach cabana, and the Intracoastal Waterway side of the property has a pool and a dock, the agents said.
Thompson listed the mansion for $28.5 million in 2023, and dropped the price three times before selling for $15.6 million this month, Redfin shows. That equates to a $12.9 million price reduction.
The mansion is just a few doors down from billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s 16-acre oceanfront compound, an historic estate known as Gemini. Ellison put Manalapan on the map in 2022 when he dropped a record $173 million to buy it from billionaire Netscape co-founder Jim Clark. The sale brought the spotlight to the island town, which is just south of Palm Beach and a favorite among luxury buyers for its sprawling ocean-to-lake estates.
“It’s an alternative to Palm Beach,” Collum said, “You get a lot more bang for your buck.”
Ellison doubled down on his investment in the town in August, when he bought the oceanfront Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa for $277.4 million. Agents say it added to the Manalapan hype.
Tagliamonte noted the latest deal closed in spite of a pre-election slowdown in sales.
“A lot of people are just sitting on the fence,” she said.