A real estate development company that had once hoped to build a beachfront mansion on speculation at 965 N. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach has instead sold the vacant lot for $58 million, the price reported in the multiple listing service.
The property measures 1.2 acres with 150 feet of direct shoreline and is the fifth property north of the short curve that wraps around the north side of the Palm Beach Country Club. The lot had been on the market for more than two years.
The Palm Beach Daily News is the first media outlet to report the sale.
The deed recorded Oct. 20 identifies the buyer as a Florida limited liability company named 965 NOB LLC. North Ocean Boulevard is often abbreviated “NOB” by those who do business in Palm Beach’s real estate community.
That entity, 965 NOB LLC, is managed by Erik Moody, whose mailing address is that of the New York City office of Silver Lake, business records show. Silver Lake’s website describes the company as a global technology investment firm with operations North America, Europe and Asia.
In March, a similarly named limited liability company linked in public records to Moody and Silver Lake bought an oceanfront house down the street for a recorded $31 million. That house was recently listed for sale at just under $40 million.
Moody could not immediately be reached for comment.
On the seller’s side was Stock Development of Naples, on Florida’s west coast. The company had put the lot on the market more than two years ago after the company twice failed to win Town Hall’s approval for its proposed mansion.
Both sets of plans were killed by the town’s Architectural Commission after the project faced significant opposition from its North End neighbors, including Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton, whose mansion is immediately south of the lot. Commissioners agreed that the proposed mansion was overscaled for the lot and out of character with other homes in the neighborhood.
Stock Development had bought the property in early 2021 for $34.15 million, property records show. Stock owned the lot through a company named 965 North Ocean Boulevard LLC, a Florida limited liability company managed by Brian K. Stock, records show. John Ferry, chief financial officer of Stock Development, signed the deed to sell the lot as vice president of 965 North Ocean Boulevard LLC.
The property entered the market in April 2023, shortly after the architecture board rejected the second set of plans for the West Indies-style mansion. If it had been built as designed, the house and guesthouse would have had a total of 18,746 square feet, about 5,000 of which would be below-ground.
Speaking during the final architectural review meeting in March 2023, Middleton was succinct in his appraisal of the project: “This is a developer’s house,” he said, “not a resident’s house.”
Originally asking $74.5 million, the lot’s price dropped by about $7 million to $67.495 million in January, according to the multiple listing service. The sale closed Oct. 14, the MLS shows.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates was the listing agent in the recent sale, the MLS shows. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
Lead agent Marley Goodman Overman of Illustrated Properties worked with agent Gary Pohrer of Serhant on the buyer’s side, Pohrer confirmed before declining further comment about the transaction. Overman also declined to discuss the sale.
Overman and Pohrer also represented the buyer in late March when the house down the street at 1160 N. Ocean Blvd. sold to 1160 NOB LLC, linked to Moody, in the $31 million deal. The house at 1160 N. Ocean Blvd. is about a half-mile south of the vacant lot that just changed hand.
The sellers in the March deal were longtime Palm Beach residents Lynn and Paul L. “Jay” Maddock Jr.
Pohrer recently put the house at 1160 N. Ocean Blvd. back on the market with an asking price of $39.5 million.
Previous owners of 965 N. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach
Moens handled both sides of the February 2021 off-market sale when Stock Development used its ownership entity to buy the lot at 965 N. Ocean Blvd. The sellers in that deal were Carl D. and Mary Jane Panattoni, who had recently bought — and later renovated — the former Kennedy family estate just down the street for $70 million.
When the Panattonis had bought 965 N. Ocean Blvd. in February 2020, they paid $28.57 million. That deal closed before the arrival the next month of the coronavirus pandemic, which ultimately helped upend Palm Beach’s housing market and propelled prices into the stratosphere.
At the time of the 2020 sale, the lot was the site of the seasonal home of the late Raymond Perelman and his late wife, Ruth, the parents of banker and businessman Ron Perlman. Raymond Perelman was a billionaire businessman and philanthropist who bought and sold factories. Their house was sold by a family trust.
By the time Stock Development bought the property, the old Perlman house had been razed.
Stock Development and its Stock Custom Homes division has developed one other home on speculation in Palm Beach, at 916 S. Ocean Blvd. The company sold that seven-bedroom house in the Estate Section for $57 million in December 2021 to Mawa 916 LLC, a company managed by Palm Beach attorney Louis Hamby III. Stock had bought the property at 916 S. Ocean Blvd. in 2017 for $12 million.
In the sale last March of the former Maddock house at 1160 N. Ocean Blvd., the sellers were represented by Sotheby’s International Realty agents Judge Moss and John Dewing, whose mother is Lynn Maddock.
Real estate attorney Larry B. Alexander Jr. of the Jones Foster law firm in Palm Beach served as the buying company’s authorized representative in the sale at 1160 N. Ocean Blvd. That house and its separate pool house together have seven bedrooms and nearly 8,000 square feet of living space, inside and out. The land measures four-fifths of an acre, and the coastal road separates the bulk of the property from its beachfront parcel, which has 150 feet of shoreline.
In the purchase of the vacant lot at 965 N. Ocean Blvd., the “principal address” of buyer 965 NOB LLC is listed in business records as that of a Roseville, California, company named Asset Preservation Co. That business specializes in helping minimize tax obligations in real estate transactions by using an IRS-recognized instrument called a 1031 Exchange, according to its website. A 1031 Exchange allows sellers of real estate investments to defer capital-gains taxes by reinvesting the money in other properties under specific circumstances.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
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 dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Subscribe today to support our journalism.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: UPDATE: Builder sells empty Palm Beach lot for $58M after seaside spec-house plans derail
Reporting by Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
