Billionaire Tepper on buyers side of Palm Beach mansion sale closed for as much as $73M: sources – Palm Beach Daily News

Darrell Hofheinz|Palm Beach Daily News

Hedge-fund billionaire David Tepper and his wife, Nicole, are on the buyers side of an off-market salethat closed Friday foras much as$73million for a never-lived-in oceanfront mansion on the North End of Palm Beach, sources have confirmed for the Palm Beach Daily News.

The price recorded late Friday afternoon with thedeed for 905 N. Ocean Blvd. was$68.385 million. Recorded prices are often lower than contract pricesbecausethe latter may include items such as real estate commissions, fees and furnishings, real estate observers say. The buyer was not identified in the preliminary information about the transaction posted on the Palm Beach County Clerks website.

The sale of the seven-bedroom, Old Florida bungalow-style house marked one of thehighest recorded prices ever paid for a property north of the Palm Beach Country Club. It also is the second-most expensive never-lived-in house ever sold in Palm Beach, property records show.

With about 19,000 square feet of living space, inside and out, the house was completed last year on a direct-beachfront lot with about 125 feet of shoreline. The house has about 12,000 square feet of interior space and was completely furnished when it sold.

Measuring a little more than an acre, the lot is the second property north of the coastal roads curve around the north end of the Palm Beach Country Club.

The Palm Beach Daily News reported last week that Tepper had put the house under contract with the sellers, real estate investor Pat Carney and his wife, Lillian, who are longtime residents. Although the exact sales price at the time wasnt known, the Wall Street Journal initially reported that roughly $73 million would change hands in the sale.

>>MORE:Billionaire Tepper has North End house under contract for $70M-plus: sources, reports

David Tepper, who owns the Carolina Panthers football team, joins a string of hedge-fund billionaires and sports franchise owners who have bought properties in Palm Beach.

With a fortune estimated by Forbes at$13 billion, Tepper, 63, is the richest NFL team owner in the country. Forbes ranked him 41st on its latest list of the wealthiest 400 U.S. billionaires and described him as arguably the greatest hedge fund manager of his generation.

Tepper founded and heads Appaloosa Management, a global hedge fund based in Miami Beach, where he and his wife have a home. The couple also has longtime ties to New Jersey.

Tepper paid a reported $2.3 billion for the Carolina Panthers in 2018, two years after he movedhis company from New Jersey to Miami-Dade County. Before founding Appaloosa Management in 1993, he directed junk-bond operations at Goldman Sachs, according to Forbes.

>>MORE: Sale recorded at $122.7M seaside spec house sets new record in Palm Beach

Pat Carney is chairman and CEO of Claremont Cos., a real estate investment, development and asset-management company based in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The Carneys own a lakefront house in Palm Beach that they use as their primary residence, although they spend summers in Massachusetts, Pat Carneypreviously told the Daily News.

The Carneys and the Teppers could not be reached for comment.

Agent Jim McCann of Premier Estate Properties has represented Carney in a number of real estate transactions. But McCann could not be reached to confirm if he was involvedin the sale of 905N. Ocean Blvd. The Daily News also could not confirm if an agent or agency handled the buyers side of the sale.

The design of the just-completed house bought by the Teppers and a new one next door to the south, developed by a different owner stirred controversy when they were reviewed over several months by the Architectural Commission in 2018. Neighbors vigorously complained that the initial designs were too large for their lots. Both projects were scaled down considerably before the board approved them.

Pat Carney told architectural commissioners he and his wife were going to build the house as a custom home for themselves as a change from their longtime home on the lake. But they were caught off-guard by the bitter opposition to the plans, especially from their neighbors immediately to the north, real estate developer Murray Goodman and his wife, Joannie. The Goodmans told town officials they were worried the new house would encroach on their privacy.

>>MORE:How two controversial houses finally won approval in Palm Beach

In March 2016, the Carneys had paid a recorded $14.57 million for their lot, which was sliced from a 2.3-acre property sold by a revocable trust in the name of late Lorraine Friedman, who had lived there in a 1970s-era residential compound with her late husband, Jack. TheFriedmans' house and several outbuildings all with distinctive blue-tile roofs had been razed by the time the Carneys closed on the property.

In a simultaneous deal orchestrated by Pat Carney, Palm Beach resident Keith Beaty and his son, Clark, bought the other half of the old Friedman estate for $14.57 million.

I had agreed to buy the whole parcel, Carney told the Daily News at the time of the sale. Then I invited the Beatys to participate.

>>MORE: Seaside estate being split in half sells for about $30M in Palm Beach

The Beaty family has since developed a house on speculation on the lot at 901 N. Ocean Blvd.The house wasjust listed for $84 million, furnished, by agent Christopher Deitz of William Raveis South Florida.

The land owned by the Carneys, Beatys and Goodmans wasonce part of Playa Riente, an elaborate1923 estate designed by noted society architect Addison Mizner and demolished in the late 1950s by its final owner, the late Anna Dodge Dillman.

>>MORE:New seaside spec mansion gets $84M price tag, furnished, in Palm Beach

The Teppers new house was described to the Architectural Commission by its designer, Daniel Menard of LaBerge & Menard, as having cottage-y style architecture with simple windows, deep eaves supported by brackets and broad tapered columns that recall the bungalows built during Palm Beachs early days.

Pat Carney has developed and sold a number of never-lived-in homes in Palm Beach. In March 2016 he sold for nearly $43.7 million a beachfront house he developed on speculation at 1695 N. Ocean Way. The sale marked the third never-lived-in, furnished mansion developed by Carney to change hands within the previous seven months. In all, those three sales two in Palm Beach and one in nearby Manalapan totaled $108.1 million.

>>MORE:Oceanfront spec mansion developed by Carney sells for nearly $44 million

McCann then of the Corcoran Group but today at Premier Estate Properties represented him in all of those sales.

In the 2016 sale at 1695 N. Ocean Way, hedge-fund manager Ken Tropin was the behind the entity that bought the house, and he later expanded the estate by buying the oceanfront property immediately to the south. Tropin was represented by agent Suzanne Frisbie, who later left the Corcoran Group to join McCann at Premier Estate Properties.

>>FROM THE ARCHIVES:Delaware entity pays $33M for Carney's new Manalapan estate

The other two spec homes sold within the seven-month period by Carney were a waterfront house in Manalapan at 800 S. Ocean Blvd., which sold to a Delaware-registered limited liability company for $33 million in September 2015; and a lakefront house in Palm Beach at 390 N. Lake Way, which sold in December 2015 for $31.4 million. In the latter deal, broker Steve Hall of Hall Real Estate acted on behalf of the buyer, an entity linked to Bain Capital/Private Equity executive Paul Edgerley and his wife, Sandra.

The most expensive sale of a house developed on speculation in Palm Beach closed last week at 535 N. County Road. That oceanfront mansion on 2 acres set a Florida sales record when it changed hands for a recorded $122.7 million in a sale previously reported by the Palm Beach Daily News. Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates had the listing. The buyer, said to be financier Scott Shleifer, worked with New York City broker Ryan Serhant of the concierge-style agency Serhant in collaboration with agent Christopher Leavitt of Douglas Elliman Real Estates Palm Beach brokerage. The house had been marketed with a price tag of$140 million.

>>FROM THE ARCHIVES:Lakefront spec home built by Carney sells for $31.4 million

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This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com

@PBDN_hofheinz

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Billionaire Tepper on buyers side of Palm Beach mansion sale closed for as much as $73M: sources - Palm Beach Daily News