Palm Beach real estate investors and seasonal residents Bennie M. and Stephanie C. Bray of Texas have sold — for a recorded $15 million — a luxury townhouse they had owned through a family trust since late 2023 in Midtown Palm Beach.
The Brays, who have longtime ties to Dallas, sold the four-bedroom townhouse at 218 Brazilian Ave. as trustees of The Bray Family Trust, according to the deed recorded April 17.
On the buyers’ side were David L. and Nancy L. Lewis, the deed shows.
Completed in 2022, the townhouse and its twin to the west each have 5,335 square feet of living space, inside and out, with fine finishes, private pools, outdoor loggias and summer kitchens, according to sales listings.
Among the amenities, No. 218 has a kitchen with high-end appliances, an office and a two-car garage. The two-story residence features a “floating” staircase, an elevator and an LED lighting system.
The duplex stands on a lot of about two-fifths of an acre. It is the second property west of South County Road and is within walking distance of a variety of shopping and dining venues, including those on Worth Avenue.
The Lewises’ were represented by agent Daniel Ekerold of Douglas Elliman Real Estate in their purchase, according to the multiple listing service. The sale closed April 15, the multiple listing service shows.
Corcoran Group agent Allison Wren held the listing and had priced the townhouse at $16.895 million. It had been on the market since the first week of February, according to the MLS.
Ekerold, Wren and their clients could not be reached for comment.
Bennie Bray founded wholesaler CraftMark Bakery and Select Product Corp., a manufacturer and converter of paper products for use in restaurants, according to published reports. He also has been involved in the venture-capital and private-equity industries, and is an operating partner with CIC Partners, a Dallas-based investments firm.
The Brays and their trust had paid $13.86 million for the never-lived-in townhouse in October 2023, property records show. They bought it from technology executive Wendy D. Tirollo of Bonita Springs, who owned it as an investment property and never lived there.
Agent Tom Shaw of Sotheby’s Internatoinal Realty handled both sides of the 2023 transaction, just as he had done when Tirollo bought the unit in January 2023, the MLS shows.
The Bray family has used trusts to buy and sell several properties in Palm Beach over the past decade, including the lakefront home that was once the vacation home of the late Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. A Bray family trust bought the former Madoff house on North Lake Way in a 2010 sale overseen by federal agents and then sold it in 2013.
Most recently, the Brays and their trust in March 2024 sold a Kirkland House condominium facing Midtown Beach for a recorded $11.93 million — or about $3 million less than they had paid for it in 2022. Their real estate agent at the time, Dana Koch of the Corcoran Group, said the couple’s willingness to take a loss on Unit 3A at 101 Worth Ave. was directly related to their purchase of the larger townhouse at 218 Brazilian Ave.
“The Brays were looking for more space and made a business decision” Koch told the Palm Beach Daily News in 2024 but said he and his co-listing agent, Corcoran’s Paulette Koch, could not comment further.
In the Kirkland house deal, agent Antoinette Vigilante acted for the buyers, entrepreneur Evelyn Jerassy and her financier husband, Richard Mashaal. Vigilante at the time was with William Raveis South Florida but has since joined Coldwell Banker Realty.
In June 2022, the Brays’ trust sold a four-bedroom house at 449 Australian Ave. for $14.9 million. In that deal, they were represented by Wren, with Sotheby’s International Realty agent Christine Gibbons handling the buyer’s side. The Brays had bought that property for $5.8 million in 2020.
The Brazilian Avenue townhouses were built by billionaire developer Richard J. Kurtz, a longtime Palm Beach resident who heads The Kamson Corp., his family business. The company manages about 15,000 multi-family buildings in the Northeast and Florida.
Kurtz bought the Brazilian Avenue property for $6.6 million in October 2020. His purchase included the plans for the townhomes, which had already been approved by the town for the development team that sold him the property.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email him at dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Bray family parts with townhome for $15 million in Midtown Palm Beach
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
