Venture capital investor Ben Ling and his husband, Hedge Labs co-founder Chris Coudron, bought the waterfront teardown next to their Palm Island mansion for $40 million.
The couple bought homebuilder Pedro Adrian and his wife Adria Adrian’s home at 145 and 149 Palm Avenue, which was on the market for $47 million. The property abuts the bridge to Hibiscus Island, which means Ling and Coudron only have neighbors to the east.
The sale marks the priciest on Palm and Hibiscus islands so far this year.
In 2021, Ling and Coudron paid about $29.5 million for the eight-bedroom, 11,058-square-foot mansion at 135 Palm Avenue, which sits on a 0.7-acre lot. They were part of the early wave of tech buyers from the West Coast. Ling also moved his company, Bling Capital.
Ling, founder and general partner of Miami Beach-based Bling, has backed 19 billion-dollar companies, according to Bling’s website. He’s worked in senior roles at Google, YouTube and Facebook, and made early investments in Lyft, Square, Palantir and other tech firms.
With the purchase of the 1.3-acre property next door, they now control about 2 acres of land. The Adrias bought the double-lot estate in the mid-1980s. It includes a cabana, pool, tennis court and 200 feet of water frontage.
The property hit the market in September asking $59 million with Chad Carroll and Jesus Adrian of the Chad Carroll Group at Compass, and the price was reduced in January to its most recent ask. Compass agent Liz Hogan represented the buyers.
Hogan declined to name the buyers, but confirmed they are creating one large compound with the deal — an increasingly common strategy among wealthy property owners.
“What they have is so special, it’s worth more than they paid,” Hogan said. Ling and Coudron paid $69.5 million for the two properties.
Earlier this summer, commercial real estate investor and developer Robert Rivani sold an investment home on Palm Island to a company led by Jose Mas of the billionaire Mas family and architect Cesar Molina, who have been working together to acquire and redevelop homes in South Florida. Rivani flipped the mansion for $25 million, just $2 million more than he paid roughly six months earlier.
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