Developed on speculation to be threshold-ready in December, a four-bedroom house rising at 221 Atlantic Ave. has entered the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service with a price tag of $5.5 million.

That works out to about $1,100 per square foot for the 5,000-square-foot, British West Indies-style house. Brokers say that’s a magic number, appealing to a wide range of buyers while offering the developer an appropriate return on investment.

It’s also a price that some locals thought they might never see again during the depths of the Great Recession. No worries about that now, when escalating land prices are likely to boost that number even higher over the next year, barring anything unforeseen.

Seven blocks north of Royal Poinciana Way, the lot measures nearly a quarter-acre. Developer Anderson C. Ohman Jr. bought it for $1.5 million in June 2014 through his firm, Anderson Charles. It was sold by Margo Hostyn and a trust in the name of her husband, Peter, property records show.

Ohman also is an agent at Valore Group Real Estate, where he has the house listed. Designed by architect Pat Segraves, it’s being built by PalmCorp Construction Services with about 4,500 square feet under air conditioning.

Although the drywall is in, a buyer could still specify finishes and customize other details, Ohman said. Among its features are a two-bay garage and an elevator.

“Each of our four bedrooms is ensuite, so each could be used as a master,” said Ohman, who comes from a development family in northeast Ohio but has lived in South Florida for several years.

The designated master bedroom, meanwhile, has two full bathrooms, and the house has another three baths plus a half-bath.

“We always say, ‘You can never have too many bathrooms,’ ” said Ohman, who reports he has been fielding calls about the property since he listed it at the tail end of August.

Ohman said he is finalizing plans to build another Palm Beach spec house. He declined to provide specifics.

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Speaking of spec houses — Agent Judge Moss of Sotheby’s International Realty says he expects to put 264 Country Club Road under contract, perhaps as early as Friday.

The two-story, four-bedroom spec house was developed and built by longtime builder Malasky Homes. It has 4,900 total square feet and is priced at $5.595 million.

With two loggias, an outdoor fireplace, an elevator and an oversized two-car garage, the house should be finished by the end of the year, Moss reports.

Moss, by the way, is actually the former owner of the property, which measures a little more than a quarter-acre immediately south of the Palm Beach Country Club. He had once planned to build a house there.

Malasky Homes paid him $1.15 million for the lot in September 2013. That was a relative bargain — and kept the home’s price down, considering its higher-end craftsmanship and amenities. Those include detailed millwork, upscale finishes and top-of-the-line appliances.

“The Malaskys bought the land right,” said Moss. “In today’s world, you would need $2.5 million for the land.”

Moss got the listing, by the way, via a tidy arrangement: It’s typical for Malasky Homes to award the listing for a new project to the agent who had been on the seller’s side when the company bought the property.

No word yet on home’s buyer, the price to be paid or when the sale will close.

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Dropping the ball? — The Obama administration badly mishandled the real estate crisis that helped bring on the Great Recession, Wall Street Journal editorial page writer Mary Kissel said this week at The Breakers.

In her talk Monday at a Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Kissel said President Obama and his advisers took office during a real estate meltdown with staggering implications.

“And the president (essentially) said, ‘Hey, we have a housing crisis. Let’s nationalize health care.’ Does that make sense? That makes no sense,” said Kissel, who appears regularly on the Fox News and Fox Business channels.

Republicans in Washington, she added, subsequently dropped the ball.

“We didn’t hear from the House and Senate (GOP) leadership about why that wasn’t a good idea. They effectively allowed the Democrats to define the roots of the financial crisis,” she said. “It was blamed on greedy Wall Street bankers, it was blamed on the 1 percent. Republicans never corrected that tale.”

The real blame for the roots of the financial crisis, Kissel wrote in a later email, should have been placed on taxpayer-backed mortgage insurance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They “insured mortgages to people who couldn’t afford homes, and they did so because they were politicized institutions. Both Republicans and Democrats fed the Fan/Fred monster,” she wrote.

“Now it’s hard for Republicans to argue for sweeping financial reform because they never explained the true problem: the fact that bureaucrats were taking massive risks with other people’s money — i.e. taxpayers,” she wrote.

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Darrell Hofheinz writes about real estate and edits Home Loggia. He welcomes news items about Palm Beach real estate for this column. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.