A ramshackle one-bedroom home on the edge of downtown West Palm Beach sold two years ago for nearly $1 million.
The hefty price tag for the 80-year-old house with less than 900-square-feet, no landscaping, no pool and no garage, rippled through the landlocked 300 block of Avila Road, with three more post World War II relics selling for between $900,000 to $1.01 million.
Today, four new modern homes, gleaming white and manicured, sit on the lots. Three sold this year for $4 million-plus. The remaining home at 369 Avila is on the market for $4.9 million, has 4,000 square feet, five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a pool, and a grand foyer with 25-foot ceilings.
It replaced a 76-year-old home with dated sunflower yellow siding and metal clamshell awnings.
The properties transformed the road bookended on Dixie Highway by a design store and Hertz Rental Car, confirming the assertions of Realtors and developers that West Palm Beach homes are still in demand three years after the pandemic free-for-all.
“Honestly, I was never in doubt,” said Coldwell Banker Realtor David Custons, who sold three of the original homes on Avila Road. “If this was six years ago, yes, but COVID changed the whole entire community.”
Custons has a contract pending to sell a fourth home at the corner of Avila Road and South Olive Avenue for $975,000. If that deal closes, there will be only one original Avila Road home remaining on the north side of the street.
Avila isn’t the only West Palm Beach street that has experienced a nearly complete makeover since the pandemic brought more wealth and residents to Palm Beach County. Edmor Road and Summa Street in the popular south of Southern Boulevard community, nicknamed SoSo, have seen similar changes with 1950s-era cinderblock ranches replaced by modern estates.
Not everyone is a fan. An August post on the Nextdoor app lamented the loss of “classic retro houses” in SoSo for “big ugly boxes.”
But like SoSo, the 300 block of Avila Road is not part of a historic district, meaning the homes can be more easily razed for new construction.
Custons believes that was part of the attraction to the street.
“Avila has no HOAs, no historic restrictions, no nothing,” Custons said.
Avila rubs elbows with the heralded El Cid and Southland/Prospect Park historic districts, which are rich with Mediterranean revival and mission-style homes built during the 1920’s Florida land boom. But residents in the 300 block of Avila resisted the designation when the other communities became historic in 1993, said Patricia Byrnes, who has lived on Avila Road for more than 30 years.
“We didn’t want people coming here and telling us what we could do with our homes,” Byrnes said in a 2023 interview. “That’s the advantage here, we’re not historic.”
Although Avila Road is outside the historic districts, it is in the El Cid Court subdivision, which in 1940 was selling lots for $15 per square foot between Olive Avenue and Dixie Highway, according to an advertisement that year in The Palm Beach Post.
Byrnes, who believes being part of El Cid Court ads cachet to Avila Road, was concerned that the new homes wouldn’t fit the area or that a developer would try to build townhomes.
She said Sept. 10 that she’s pleased with what was built. Each home has a different design with at least two separate architects working on them.
“They are beautiful. They are a real asset, and not square boxes,” Byrnes said. “I’m surprised at how costly they were and that people can afford to buy them but it’s all a plus.”
Lisa Wilkinson, director of luxury sales for Douglas Elliman, is the listing agent for the $4.9 million home at 369 Avila Road. Wilkinson said homes in the 300 block, which is two blocks west of the Intracoastal Waterway, previously got lower prices but people are more willing to give to consider it, especially if the homes are new.
Also, Avila Road is less than two miles south of downtown West Palm Beach, which since the pandemic has earned the nickname “Wall Street South” for the number of financial firms opening offices there.
“The dollar per square foot that we achieved on Avila are a lot higher than in SoSo’s 200 block,” Wilkinson said. “I feel as confident listing, showing and selling a property located on the 300 block as I do on the lake block.”
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm Beach real estate investors bet big on Avila Road south of downtown
Reporting by Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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