A Few Acres in Florida...
For $20 Million and Up
by Ben Casselman
From The Wall Street Journal Online
August 15, 2006
Amid cooling in much of Florida's high-end real-estate market, two waterfront lots have gone on sale for near-record asking prices.
In late July, Reed Krakoff -- the executive creative director of Coach and one of three presidents at the handbag and accessories company -- put on the market a six-acre parcel in Palm Beach, on the Intracoastal Waterway. He is asking just below $20 million for the property, which has more than 175 feet of unobstructed water frontage. It's one of the few large undeveloped parcels remaining in Palm Beach, says listing agent Paulette Koch of Corcoran Group.
Mr. Krakoff bought the land for $9.4 million two years ago from the estate of Abraham Gosman, a former nursing-home developer who declared bankruptcy in 2001. (Another of Mr. Gosman's Palm Beach properties, a 43,000-square-foot mansion on the ocean side of the island, sold at auction for $41.4 million to Donald Trump in 2004.) About two acres of the Waterway site are developable. The Coach executive had cut some of the vegetation back on the property, but then shifted his attention to projects outside the area.
Undeveloped parcels in Palm Beach have commanded high prices in recent years. Last year, a 3.9-acre parcel on the ocean side of the island sold for just below $25 million, and a two-acre property near Mr. Krakoff's sold for $22.8 million in December.
In Palm Beach County, home sales exceeding $2 million fell 25% in the year so far, from year-earlier levels, according to Wallace Turner, a local broker who isn't involved in Mr. Krakoff's listing.
On Golden Beach, for $26.6 Million
Fifty miles down the coast, foreign investors are trying to sell another waterfront property for $26.6 million, 10 times what it fetched 14 years ago. The 1.7-acre parcel in Golden Beach, just north of Miami, lies on one of the only strips of oceanfront single-family homes in the area (the town building codes forbid high-rise developments).
The property includes a four-bedroom ranch-style house, but Ralph Arias -- who's listing the home together with Carlos Justo, both of SOL Sotheby's International Realty -- said he expects a buyer to tear down the existing home. Local ordinances would allow as many as three homes on the site, which has 250 feet of ocean frontage. Mr. Arias would say only that the owner is a "foreign company." Public records list the owner as Delaware-registered Las Balmeras Inc., which paid nearly $2.7 million for the property in 1992. The principals and the nature of the company couldn't be learned.
If the property fetches its asking price, the sale would approach the Miami-area record of $27 million, set earlier this year with the sale of a Miami Beach home.
Linebacker Hits Hard Rock
San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, the Associated Press's Defensive Rookie of the Year, has bought one of the first condos sold at the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego, under construction.
Mr. Merriman paid $469,000 for the one-bedroom apartment on the building's fifth floor. The 424-square-foot suite will come with rock-themed artwork and water views. Of the 420 units in the 12-story property in the city's downtown Gaslamp Quarter, 300 have sold, a spokeswoman says. (The complex will include a rooftop pool bar, a spa and a restaurant.)
The 22-year-old linebacker, whose primary home is in the Scripps Ranch neighborhood of San Diego, said he wanted a downtown apartment and was attracted by the development's "rock-star atmosphere." Mr. Merriman, who had 10 sacks in his first professional season, says he owns homes in Greenbelt, Md., and Washington, D.C.
The Hard Rock units come on the market at a time when San Diego's condo market is cooling. Sales of existing San Diego County condos fell 22% in June from the same month last year, according to data from the California Association of Realtors. The median sales price fell more than $26,000 (6.7%) in the same period. Many condo developers are trying to lure buyers by offering incentives, though Hard Rock said it isn't among them.
The development, which won't be complete for another year, is the first condo-hotel of Hard Rock, which has nine hotels and casinos in operation or development.
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