The predominant house at Gordon Pointe spans 11,500 sq ft.
The costliest home on the market within the U.S. hit the market this week for $295 million.
Gordon Pointe, because it’s called, is a roughly 9-acre compound in Naples, Florida, on the Gulf Coast, in an affluent enclave called Port Royal.
The mega-listing features a predominant house that spans about 11,500 square feet, with six bedrooms. Two guest houses, each over 5,000 square feet, bring the estate’s total interior living space to 22,800 square feet. All three homes are on a peninsula that delivers 1,650 feet of waterfront, a non-public yacht basin and T-shaped dock.
Before you begin counting up bedrooms and calculating the worth per square foot (which is about $12,900), co-listing agent Leighton Candler of Corcoran told CNBC the worth here is not a lot concerning the size of the three grand homes on the property, it’s about privacy, beach frontage and a rare opportunity for significant development.
In keeping with a press release that launched the listing, “The property can accommodate greater than 200,000 square feet of residential development,” meaning the land has a ton of untapped potential.
“There could be eight waterfront homes on this property,” Candler told CNBC. While the property may very well be broken apart after purchase, the Recent York-based broker speculates a possible buyer will more likely maintain it as a non-public family compound.
Gordon Pointe’s sandy white beach stretches over 700 feet on the Gulf of Mexico.
The nine acres are made up of contiguous lots, the primary of them purchased in 1985 by John and Rhodora Donahue. John Donahue co-founded a Pittsburgh-based investment management firm, now often known as Federated Hermes, with over $758 billion in assets under management, in accordance with the firm’s website.
The waterfront view of the predominant house and a stretch of beach on Gordon Pointe.
After that first purchase in 1985, the Donahues continued to purchase up more of the peninsula and didn’t stop until they owned all of it. Their buying spree created an exclusive, gated compound almost entirely surrounded by water. A single private drive means no pesky through traffic.
“It gives you all the advantages of being on an island, but on Gordon Pointe your loved ones could be secluded without feeling isolated,” Candler said.
Together with a T-shaped dock that may accommodate six boats, the Donahues also constructed a non-public yacht basin that is 231 feet by 50 feet and has a depth of just about 8 feet. Candler told CNBC it is a rare amenity that needed to be approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A view of Gordon Pointe with the private yacht basin within the lower right corner.
Dawn McKenna Group / Coldwell Banker Realty
Can Gordon Pointe fetch $295 million?
In keeping with Realtor.com the median listing price in Port Royal is $24.1 million.
The very best-priced home, before Gordon Pointe, within the ultra luxe beachfront community hit the market in December at $45 million, or just below $4,300 per square foot. Meanwhile an empty lot of just about 1.5 acres adjoining to Gordon Pointe has been available on the market for a yr, at an asking price of $63 million.
“We did our greatest to cost [Gordon Pointe] and we will defend that price all day long,” co-listing agent Dawn McKenna of Coldwell Banker Realty told CNBC.
McKenna said the listing is already drawing significant interest because it went live Wednesday and that she’s already booked eight in-person visits with prequalified buyers.
It’s no surprise to listen to listing brokers argue an eye-popping price tag is justified, but true comparisons at this level and buyers with enough money to pay that form of money are few and much between. And, as is the case with any real estate listing, there is usually a big gap between an initial asking price and what a property ultimately sells for.
For some nine-figure context, here’s a more in-depth take a look at the second- and third-most-expensive listings currently on the market in America.
A view of the Central Park Tower at 217 West 57th St. in Recent York City.
Source: Cody Boone, SERHANT Studios
The primary of the 2 listings is a penthouse that debuted in Recent York City in September 2022.
The residence sits high atop 217 West 57th Street, overlooking Central Park, spanning three floors and over 17,500 square feet.
Broker Ryan Serhant made headlines when he listed the mega-apartment at $250 million, which he told CNBC on the time was the suitable price.
“I comprehend it sounds crazy, but relatively speaking, it’s priced at an ideal value on a per-square-foot basis,” Serhant said in 2022. “It’s just a really, very big apartment with plenty of amenities.”
But naysayers questioned the nosebleed asking price, which amounted to over $14,000 a square foot.
“I consider this a fantasy price,” Manhattan luxury broker Donna Olshan told CNBC in 2022.
The triplex residence sat available on the market for 12 months with no takers. After a yearlong run at $250 million, the asking price was slashed by $55 million, or 22%. The pricey pad remains to be available on the market for $195 million.
Contained in the $250 million penthouse on ‘Billionaires’ Row’
It was an identical journey in Los Angeles, with the seven-bedroom 20-bath mansion often known as Casa Encantada.
The mansion, positioned at 10644 Bellagio Road in Bel Air, is owned by kid’s book writer Karen Winnick, the widow of late billionaire and financier Gary Winnick.
The residence hit the market in June for $250 million.
After the sky-high ask didn’t lure a buyer, the house was taken off the market only to reappear in November with a $55 million price cut.
Listing agent Kurt Rappaport remains to be in search of a buyer willing to pay the $195 million.
Nine-figure whisper sales
The truth is nine-figure listings can take months, even years, to sell, and that is not necessarily a mirrored image of a broker’s ability.
Real estate consultant Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, checked out 10 U.S. home sales that traded for $150 million or more and located a lot of them were so-called whisper listings — sales that leveraged hushed word-of-mouth marketing and no public real estate listings or marketing campaigns.
That makes tracking price changes over the lifetime of the listings nearly unattainable.
Jeff Bezos gives a thumbs-up as he speaks during an event about Blue Origin’s space exploration plans in Washington, D.C., May 9, 2019.
Clodagh Kilcoyne | Reuters
But perhaps unsurprisingly there are loads of famous billionaires involved in these sales, including hedge funder Ken Griffin, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and mega-investor Marc Andreessen, who each picked up nine-figure compounds in quiet off-market deals.
The Chartwell Estate in Los Angeles
Photograph by Jim Bartsch, courtesy of the Estate of Jerry Perenchio
One notable mega-mansion of the ten transactions compiled by Miller did officially come to market and has an interesting price history.
In 2017 the mansion at 750 Bel Air Road in Los Angeles, often known as the Chartwell Estate, had a $350 million price tag. It sat available on the market with no bites, and the oversized asking price took several deep cuts, to $195 million.
In 2019 the estate finally sold for $150 million, purchased by Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp. and son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Have a look within Lachlan Murdoch’s recent $150 million LA mansion
And one other interesting mega-transaction made the list: A Malibu mansion positioned at 27712 Pacific Coast Highway. While it never actually had a public listing, The Wall Street Journal reported its whispered price tag was $295 million.
When it sold in 2023 in an off-market deal to music power couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé, it went for $190 million.
