A waterfront megahome in Highland Beach has sold twice this year, and each time it has raised the bar for for this South Florida town, which has become one of the hottest real estate markets in the state.
Located in the eastern part of Palm Beach County, Highland Beach is just over 1 square mile. While real estate prices are quickly rising in the small town, buyers may see an opportunity as the price per square foot is less than what homeowners are paying in nearby Palm Beach and Miami Beach.
The 11,000-square-foot home at 3715 South Ocean Boulevard is the most expensive home to ever be sold in Highland Beach. Built of concrete and glass, the home has seven bedrooms and nine baths, but it is its insane features like walls and floors made of lava that likely helped it to fetch $30.25 million.
“The home is an oceanfront fortress designed to withstand superstorms,” said listing agent Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman real estate.
The residence commands 120 feet of oceanfront and is located about 50 miles north of Miami and 21 miles south of Palm Beach.
The couple put the home back on the market in July, this time with Adzem as their listing agent and an asking price of $30 million. The new price tag was about 33% higher than what the couple paid for it four months earlier. And just a few short weeks after putting it on the market, the home’s asking price was increased to $32 million — $10 million more than its previous sale price.
“In a typical real estate market, increasing a listing price is not a good strategy,” Adzem said, adding that nothing is typical about the South Florida real estate market this year.
Just three weeks after that $2 million price hike, the fully-furnished home sold for $30.25 million, breaking the record the mansion set a few months earlier. With the sale, the home’s value skyrocketed more than 40%, earning the buyers-turned-sellers a nearly $8.7 million premium in the seven-month flip.
“We were dealing with an unmotivated seller and many interested prospects, which triggered a premium,” explained Adzem.
And while the mansion was breaking records, so was the entire town. The average sale price of a single family home in Highland Beach was $9.8 million in the third quarter, up 178.4% from the year-ago period, according to the Elliman Report.
The gain outperformed Palm Beach, which saw a 111.4% rise, and nearby Boca Raton, which saw a 38.5% gain, in the average selling price of a single family home during the same time period.
In fact, the average sales price shot up higher in Highland Beach than any other market tracked in the Elliman Report, surpassing not just all of South Florida, but also New York and Los Angeles.
