The gated entrance at the luxury oceanfront home on Ponte Vedra Boulevard, listed for sale at $7.9 million.

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Reporter- Jacksonville Business Journal

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If there’s any lingering questions about the health of Northeast Florida’s luxury real estate market, consider this: A homeowner is confident enough to list a 7,560-square-foot oceanfront mansion for sale, with an asking price of $7.9 million.

The asking price is the most expensive existing home on the market in the region, according to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service, which does not include homes in Amelia Island or St. Augustine.

There is a 40-acre residential lot on the Guana River for sale, listed at $9.75 million. That property — zoned for horses, according to the listing — has been on the market since April 2013.

But the $7.9 million ask for the Ponte Vedra Boulevard home, listed for sale by Manormor Sotheby’s International Realty in Jacksonville on New Year’s Eve, trumps the next most expensive existing home by more than $1 million.

If the home sells at the asking price — or even $1 million less than asking price — it will beat the top home sale of 2013, a $5.9 million oceanfront home in Ponte Vedra Beach. To see the top home sales of 2013, click here.

The recent formation of VL Luxury Homes, a team of Watson Realty Corp. agents specializing in luxury properties priced from $750,000, as well as Prudential Network Realty CEO Linda Sherrer’s appointment to a national luxury home council, represent good things ahead for the top-tier niche of the real estate market, said Jeffrey Chefan, principal of Manormor Sotheby’s International Realty.

“Now that the market seems to be recovering, more people are starting to get back into the business,” Chefan said, “but in the luxury end, you have to understand the properties, the market, the luxury client and how to expose and market that property.”

Click through the photos for a tour of the $7.9 million oceanfront home.

Ashley covers real estate, hospitality and retail