Price drops by about $5.5 million for new Palm Beach house. What's the new price?

Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News
Updated ·3 min read
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Palm Beach’s real estate market saw another substantial price cut last week when the price of a new, never-lived-in house at 584 Island Drive dropped by about $5.5 million to $34.5 million.

The six-bedroom house on the east side of Everglades Island in the Estate Section was priced at $39.999 million when it was listed for sale in mid-January as construction was drawing to a close.

The house has Dutch Colonial architecture and 7,852 square feet of living space, inside and out. It looks directly across to the Everglades Club’s golf course and a stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway. Among its amenities, the property has a new dock with a boat lift.

When it broke ground, the house was to be a custom home for a couple whose identity remains cloaked in property records by the limited liability company that owns it, Shamrock Island LLC, as previously reported by the Palm Beach Daily News. The couple paid $17.75 million for the land in August 2021, property records show, and simultaneously signed a separate construction contract with contractor Sabatello Cos.

At 584 Island Drive in Palm Beach, a just-completed lakefront house on the east side of Everglades Island has just had its priced reduced to $34.5 million from $39.999 million.
At 584 Island Drive in Palm Beach, a just-completed lakefront house on the east side of Everglades Island has just had its priced reduced to $34.5 million from $39.999 million.

While the house was being built, the couple bought another house on the North End, where they continue to reside, said agent Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties, who holds the listing for the new house on Everglades Island. Agent Bill Yahn of the Corcoran Group also is involved with the property.

Brandt declined to identify her clients, who are ready to part with the house they don’t need. And that situation likely explains, at least in part, the look-at-me price cut to grab the attention of buyers and their agents.

“This strategic price repositioning has already created a flurry of activity, a sign that this is a strong market with increasingly healthy demand when the pricing is competitive and intriguing,“ Brandt told the Palm Beach Daily News. “Buyers are now entering the spring market, and this is their opportunity over the next few months to secure their slice of paradise for next season and beyond.”

She described the property as “particularly special“ because it is the only new house available on Everglades Island and the only never-lived-in new-build waterfront project priced below $35 million in Palm Beach.

Island Drive is the sole street on Everglades Island, which is less than a mile long. A short bridge connects it to the rest of town.

With a price just reduced to $34.5 million, a new house with a dock at 584 Island Drive on the east side of Everglades Island faces about 100 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway.
With a price just reduced to $34.5 million, a new house with a dock at 584 Island Drive on the east side of Everglades Island faces about 100 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway.

Overall pricing in Palm Beach has been complicated by the effects of the pandemic-fueled real estate boom, which reached its height in early 2022 and sent home values and asking prices into the stratosphere. Many buyers and sellers, agents and brokers agree, are still struggling to come to a meeting point where prices are concerned.

The good news? Deals are being struck. An online search of the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service on the morning of March 5 revealed a strong showing for Palm Beach in-the-works sales that had progressed to the final stages. In all, 18 single family houses and 24 units in the condominium-and-cooperative segment were under contract, while another six potential condo sales are in the “contingent” phase, the search showed.

So no one should be surprised if more properties undergo asking-price reductions in the coming weeks.

And those figures don’t include any off-market transactions that may be brewing.

One last note: Of those 18 single-family homes under contract in the MLS, 10 have had their asking prices reduced since they were first listed.

A new house at 584 Island Drive in Palm Beach has architecture with Dutch Colonial influences, including a scalloped gable at the front entrance. The price was just dropped by about $5.5 million to $39.999 million
A new house at 584 Island Drive in Palm Beach has architecture with Dutch Colonial influences, including a scalloped gable at the front entrance. The price was just dropped by about $5.5 million to $39.999 million

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This story was updated from a previous version.

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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.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Lakeside Palm Beach house get price slashed by about $5.5M to $34.5M