Financier David Herro sold a renovated non-waterfront Palm Beach estate near Mar-a-Lago for $40 million, amid a busy season with turnkey homes selling for top dollar.
Records show Herro’s 1230 LLC, a Delaware entity, sold the mansion at 1230 South Ocean Boulevard to Julie Chrystyn Opperman. Opperman is the widow of late prominent attorney Dwight D. Opperman.
Chris Leavitt of Douglas Elliman had the listing, and Christian Angle with Christian Angle Real Estate brought the buyer. Angle placed second, and Leavitt placed eighth in The Real Deal’s 2024 ranking of Palm Beach County’s top brokers.
Herro is a partner and the chief investment officer for international equities at Harris Associates, a Chicago-based investment firm. He is also a manager at Oakmark Fund, the mutual fund associated with Harris.
Records show he bought the South Ocean Boulevard estate in 2020 for $11.5 million. Built in 1986, it spans 1 acre and has a 9,100-square-foot mansion with five bedrooms and eight bathrooms, according to property records. It is just south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, and just north of billionaire Ken Griffin’s 11.5-acre estate, which is currently under construction.
Herro tapped builder Greg Giuliano and interior designer Miles Reed for an extensive renovation, the listing shows. Leavitt described the home as “spectacular” but otherwise declined to comment on the deal.
It hit the market for $49 million in November, and went into contract in late January, Zillow shows.
Opperman, the buyer, is a writer and the steward of her late husband’s namesake foundation, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation, which bestows the annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award. The organization faced backlash last year when it dropped the requirement that the recipient be a woman, and announced its 2024 honorees, which included Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, and “junk bond king” Michael Milken, NPR reported. Ginsburg’s family members were among the critics, and the awards ceremony planned at the Library of Congress was subsequently canceled.
Dwight D. Opperman was the longtime CEO and chairman of West Publishing Company and the creator of Westlaw, a widely utilized legal research service. He was a self-made billionaire, according to his NYU Law obituary. He died in 2013 at age 89, five years after marrying Julie Opperman.
Opperman is one of many affluent Palm Beach buyers paying a premium for turnkey homes on the island. Earlier this week, a couple sold their renovated 3,300-square-foot house for $16.2 million.