By Darrell Hofheinz
Daily News Home and Loggia Editor
In a season in which high-end Palm Beach house sales have been as infrequent
as sightings of American-made cars on North County Road, powerhouse broker
Lawrence A. Moens is reporting what might turn out to be the biggest sale
since last summer.
As is his custom, he’s not saying anything about the deal. But his Palm Beach
agency, Lawrence A. Moens Associates, has changed the status from “active”
to “pending” for its $19.8 million listing of Robert E. Rich Jr.’s
oceanfront house at 101 Indian Road in the Palm Beach Board of Realtors
Multiple Listing Service.
Rich, who lives with his wife, Melinda, in Islamorada, inherited the
five-bedroom house on the north tip of the island when his father, Bob E.
Rich Sr., died in 2006. Billionaire Rich Jr. is chairman of Buffalo,
N.Y.-based Rich’s Products Corp., the diversified foods business his father
founded in 1945.
Five houses south of the inlet, the home was built in 1972 on a lot of with a
little more than 1½ acres of land, plus a protected dune parcel measuring
more than an acre with 142 feet of beachfront.
No surprise here: Moens isn’t commenting on the expected sales price or the
buyer.
Meanwhile, word on the street says several other private deals are in the
works that will record at $20 million or more within the next couple of
months. But getting anyone to comment on them publicly, including Moens, is
as difficult as finding a Hermès Birkin bag on sale.
■
A slow start to the New Year — No, it wasn’t your imagination. If you
were following Palm Beach real estate sales during the first quarter of the
year and thought, what a yawner, you were right on trend, a new sales
analysis shows.
Not only did fewer properties change hands, but those that sold did so at much
lower prices compared to the first three months of last year, according to
the latest Evans Report, which is prepared by island real estate attorney
and property owner Les Evans.
To put the year so far into perspective, real estate observers noted a
significant pick up in momentum starting in April, with more sales at much
higher prices. Those transactions, of course, are beyond the scope of Evans’
first-quarter report.
The dollar differentials noted in the report are striking. Townwide, the total
dollar amount of single-family houses that changed hands in January,
February and March of last year was about $144.4 million. That figure
plunged this year to $72.4 million.
In all, 23 single-family houses sold during the first quarter of 2012,
compared to 27 a year ago — and two of those 2011 sales hit at least $14.5
million, a figure that no sale this year has yet reached.
The average price of the houses sold was, no surprise, also down, dropping
from about $5.35 million for Q1 2011 to about $3.15 million for the three
months that ended in March.
The action on the condominium side also was sluggish townwide. In the first
three months of last year, 68 condos sold, compared to 51 during the first
quarter of this year. And the total dollar amount of the sales dropped from
$55 million in Q1 last year to $36.2 million for the same period this year.
Of the condo sales during the first three months of last year, 19 units
changed hands for $1 million or more, compared to 15 in the same price
category that sold during Q1 of this year.
Evans analyzes data from public records, newspapers and MLS systems. He has
posted the report on his law firm’s website, LREvansPA.com.
If you’re looking for some sort of bright spot in the report, you might take
comfort in the fact that at least a few more residences changed hands in the
first quarter of this year than in the final three months of 2011 — 23 vs.
21 in the single-family category; and 51 vs. 43 on the condo scene.
■
Do it yourself, he says — Last week was a busy one in Palm Beach for
Atlanta-based manufacturer Bob Fisher, whose parents, the late Louise and I.
Walter Fisher, for many years had a home on the island.
Fisher says he met with brokers and agents at several real estate agencies
with island offices, including Barrett Wells Property Group, to promote
Sagee Manor, his Tudor-style custom home that presides over 22 acres in
Highlands, N.C. He and his wife, Cathy, completed the seven-bedroom estate
in 2005 during the heady days of the real estate boom.
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