This has been a busy month, real estate-wise, for Palm Beachers Jeffrey A. and Nicola Marcus, who have upsized to a North End oceanfront residence after selling the award-winning custom house they built in Midtown. The two deals totaled $36.14 million, according to deeds recorded within a few days of each other.
Jeff Marcus, a private-equity manager, paid Discount Tire mogul Bruce T. Halle and his wife, Diane, $23.24 million for their 13,035-square-foot beachfront house at 1075 N. Ocean Blvd., according to the deed recorded Tuesday.
On the previous Friday, the Marcuses closed a $12.9 million sale of 240 Clarke Ave., their 7,140-square-foot residence that had won the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach’s 2012 Schuler Award for excellence in newer construction.
A Delaware limited-liability company named KMC Property Holdings LLC bought the four-bedroom house, according to courthouse records. The company’s address is listed in care of West Palm Beach attorney Lewis F. Crippen, and no further information about the buyer was available.
Sotheby’s International Realty agent Wally Turner handled both sides of the sale. He declined to comment.
“The house at 240 Clarke was never on the market, but we were approached by the buyer,” said Jeff Marcus, a partner in Crestview Capital Partners, a private-equity firm based in New York City. “They made us a compelling offer.”
Property records show the price paid was the highest ever for a house on the street. Four blocks north of Royal Palm Way, Clarke Avenue is considered to be one of Midtown’s prime streets.
Once the Marcuses decided to sell, Sotheby’s agent Carole Ruhlman, their longtime real agent, helped them find their new home. She and the Marcuses toured the North Ocean Boulevard property, which the Halles had vacated after they bought a larger oceanfront house down the street in 2012.
“We loved it,” Jeff Marcus said. “We just feel so fortunate that we had this opportunity.”
Relocating to the ocean appealed to the couple, Marcus said, adding that the sellers “were absolutely wonderful to deal with. Everything went so smoothly.”
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates had listed the Halle’s house at No. 1075 for $32.5 million in April. Ruhlman represented the Marcuses.
The deal marked Moens’ eighth Palm Beach sale recorded at $11.5 million or more since June 16, for a total of $134.4 million. Other agents were involved in six of those transactions, records show.
Moens couldn’t be reached. Bruce Halle, reached through his company’s Arizona headquarters, declined to comment.
On the North End
The deed shows the Halles acted individually and as trustees of the Halle Residential Community Property Trust in the sale of their six-bedroom house. It faces 120 feet of oceanfront about a half-mile north of the Palm Beach Country Club.
“It’s a very substantial house. And it was one of (fewer) than six houses available directly on the ocean,” Ruhlman said, referring to the fact that the home is not separated from the beach by a street.
In 2010, the Halle trust paid $22.5 million for the house and its lot, which measures two-thirds of an acre and affords wide sea views.
The Mediterranean-style house was developed on speculation by investor Peter J. Callahan, designed by architect Tom Kirchhoff and completed in 2007 by Wittmann Building Corp.
The Halles carried out extensive renovations, and the quality of those updates and others by the previous owners — Michael and Paola Schulhof — were impressive, Jeff Marcus said.
The interiors feature pecky-cypress ceilings, hardwood floors and elaborate cast-stone moldings. The layout includes an outdoor loggia with a Palladian-style colonnade facing the ocean. A swimming pool is on the west side of the property.
The property was once home to the late socialite Mollie Wilmot, who in 1984 found national fame after a freighter ran aground and remained stuck on her beachfront for more than three months. The property is next door to the former Kennedy compound, which is today owned by John and Marianne Castle.
Two years ago, Moens also put together the private deal in which Halle used an Arizona-based limited liability company to buy a two-bedroom property at 1473 N. Ocean Blvd. from Stanley N. and Gay Hart Gaines. The sale recorded at $41.5 million and was, at the time, the island’s highest-dollar residential sale since 2008.
In Midtown
The Marcuses’ sale of the Clarke Avenue home marks the second time in as many months that a house recently honored with the annual Elizabeth L. and John R. Shuler Award has changed hands. In May, the 2011 winner — built in 2010 at 2315 S. Ocean Blvd. — sold for a recorded $16.5 million.
Real estate observers say that in Palm Beach – where the inventory of better-quality, newer houses remains tight – recently built homes such as the two Schuler Award-winners are rare and, thus, in demand.
Jeff Marcus commissioned the house shortly before he and his wife became engaged, and she helped oversee the project. “We really wanted a house where we could live in every room — a home that would work well when just the two of us were here or when we had house-guests or dinner guests,” he said at the time of the award.
On a lot measuring a little less than a half-acre, the 2009 Mediterranean-style house was designed by architect Jeffery Smith. West of South County Road, it replaced a 1950s-era home the Marcuses bought for $5.85 million in 2007. They also have homes in New York City and Aspen, Colo.
A Moroccan-style bar is among the notable interior features of the roughly L-shaped house, which includes a separate garage accessed via a breezeway.
Before last week’s sale, the highest sale recorded on Clarke Avenue occurred in 2007, when a house at No. 113 sold for $10.13 million. Last year, other homes on the street sold for $8.25 million, $9 million and $10 million, courthouse records show.
In May, London-based investment banker Rodney Ward and his interior decorator wife, Donna, sold their much larger Shuler Award-winner on the South End. Chicago private-equity manager Bryan Cressey and his wife, Christina, bought the British Colonial-style home on the ocean. Corcoran Group agent Rosalind Clarke was involved in negotiations for the sale of the property, which had been listed at $22.5 million by Moens.