Tour a $60 million mansion in Delray Beach, Florida | Real Time Headlines

The owners of an oceanfront mansion in Delray Beach, Fla., are hoping to break local price records with a home that has old-school Italian style above ground and hidden personality below.

The upper floors are adorned with 300 carved stone columns, vaulted ceilings, and even frescoes painted in Florence, Italy, while the home’s underground spaces are filled with modern luxuries, including a supercar gallery, a glowing tequila bar, and piles of steel Making vault cash.

Two distinct design themes are wrapped in a limestone residence on the town’s ultra-high-end South Ocean Avenue. The 23,000-plus-square-foot home is called Mar Pietra, which means “sea stone” in Italian.

“With so much stone in this house, I thought it was appropriate,” owner Massimo Musa told CNBC.

Moussa founded and sold several eye care industry companies. He also developed real estate and built Mar Pietra with his now ex-wife.

This passionate project took five years to complete and employed dozens of craftsmen, painters and sculptors, many of whom came from Italy. Tons of limestone arrived from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula; hand-carved marble arrived from Verona, Italy; and vast quantities of cedar boards arrived from Colombia.

The giant home sits on 100 feet of oceanfront, according to the listing. There is a main residence and guest house with a total of nine bedrooms, twelve full baths and seven half baths. A heated underground garage adds 4,000 square feet, adding even more space through covered areas such as a grand loggia that houses another kitchen, bar, lounge and dining area.

The sprawling property is five times the size of the average home sale in Delray Beach in the first quarter, and its eight-figure price tag is 18 times the average sale price of nearly $3.3 million for luxury homes in the area, according to The Elliman Report many. The report defines luxury homes as the top 10% of homes sold.

The highest price ever sold in Delray Beach was $34 million, a listing also on South Ocean Boulevard that sold in 2021. Set in 2021 at just under $2,600 per square foot. Mar Pietra’s price tag would put it in line with that value metric.

This trophy home’s massive square footage and massive oceanfront lawn are a rarity on this stretch of beach in Palm Beach County. Moussa said that’s because of the site’s unique zoning history.

Public records show he purchased the site and the Intracoastal Waterway parcel across the street for $9 million in 2002. . Moussa, who immigrated to the United States from Italy, demolished the old building in order to build an oceanfront family home that paid homage to his homeland.

Even after the hotel was demolished, the hotel subdivision on the land remained intact, Moussa said. This allowed him to build a house with a larger footprint and fewer setbacks. Additionally, residences may extend closer to the shoreline than is typically allowed in current residential zones.

Hotel owners cleared part of the beachfront decades ago, and Moussa told CNBC that current regulations would never allow it. That clearing is now a lush evergreen lawn made of artificial grass that rolls behind his one-acre property, meeting the natural vegetation along the sandy shoreline.

With an elevation of 21 feet, the home’s sheer size is impressive, but like many listings in this price range, finding a buyer isn’t always easy. Although the property has been on the market since December 2021, its price of $60 million has remained stable. Currently offered by South Florida listing agent Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman.

“This trophy estate is one of South Florida’s finest custom luxury properties, designed to evoke timeless elegance,” Adzem told CNBC.

According to the Elliman report, first-quarter luxury single-family home inventory increased by more than 12% from a year earlier, and the average sales price of luxury single-family homes in Delray Beach fell by more than 33%.

While data suggests the market may be encountering some headwinds, Azeem remains confident in sticker prices and South Florida’s high-end real estate market.

“The ultra-luxury real estate market will continue to boom,” she said. “Wealthy clients love Palm Beach County and value oceanfront location, privacy and exclusivity above all else.”

To back up this claim, Adzem pointed to an auction just 400 meters down the street in Highland Beach, where just in May this year a beachfront home sold for $50 million per square foot. ft. over $2,800. On this coastline, Mar Pietra can actually be considered relatively cheap. A smaller nearby home, also on South Ocean Avenue, was recently listed for $74 million, or about $5,100 per square foot.

Adzem said Mar Pietra’s higher selling price was due in part to its architectural quality and the property’s rare zoning allotment, which she called priceless.

“These generous zoning allowances allow our clients to create truly unique properties that would otherwise be impossible,” she said.

It’s hard to imagine potential buyers objecting to the property being too small, but Azeem said it’s not impossible in this part of Florida. So the real estate agent and her client are ready to provide a solution.

“What is truly unique about this home is that my clients are willing to sell it with the Intracoastal Waterway parcel, which will create the only ocean-to-inshore compound in Delray Beach, Florida.”

Azeem said the two-lot deal would provide enough land to develop another beachfront home, which could include a rare spot on the Intracoastal Waterway to moor a megayacht. As for the price tag of buying a full package, Azeem said she would only discuss that number with potential buyers.