South Florida Real Estate and...

The Madoff Mansion was sold after being a year on the market.

 

Living In Palm Beach Florida- A Premier Luxury Community With A Home Town Feel 

Palm Beach Florida is an island community that is world renowned where famous people come to make their home from politicians like the Kennedy family to famous singers like Jimmy Buffet to movie stars and many wealthy business owners and heirs. Palm Beach is attracting a lot more people moving from the high taxed states like New York and New Jersey. Florida has NO state income tax, we are a great asset protection state and have homestead exemptions and protections. This is a great place to move to if you want to have the money you have now last longer and go further. For many people the journey to Palm Beach Florida begins with a second home or a vacation home and then becomes a permanent home when the residence benefits far outweigh where their original domicile used to be. 

Palm Beach Florida is the easternmost town in Florida located 65 miles north of Miami. Palm Beach is a 16 mile island town. The Intracoastal waterway divides Palm Beach Florida from the rest of Palm Beach County. 

As soon as your drive over the bridge from West Palm Beach into Palm Beach - it feels like you have just entered a different world. The atmosphere is one of calm and island type pace which is much slower than West Palm Beach which is WAY slower than big cities like New York or Los Angeles. 

The roads are lined with tall Palm Trees as you head toward the beach. You are welcomed by wonderful bed and breakfasts, day spas and of course the world famous Breakers Hotel that has acres of beachfront property. Look at these beautiful mature trees. 

Worth Avenue is located in Palm Beach Florida. Worth Avenue is one of the most famous shopping streets in the U.S. second only to Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. 

Palm Beach is home to Mar-A-Lago where Ivan Trump lives off and on during the year. Driving through the windy road along the front of Mar A Lago is quite the sight to see! 

If you like quaint small town feel living than Palm Beach is the town for you. There are about 10,000 full time residents and during the winter months the population increases to about 30,000. 

Palm Beach became its' own town 1911. In about 1902 Henry Morrison Flagler came to this area and created a resort here. He is the one who brought in the railway in order to be able to reach the island back in the day. 

You will be able to find small condos with ocean views from as low as $150,000 to luxurious oceanfront estates in the millions. 

Here is a view of West Palm Beach Trump's Plaza from the Palm Beach Island: 

 

The Seagull cottage is the oldest house in Palm Beach. " Sea Gull Cottage, 1886, architect unknown. The oldest house in Palm Beach, built for R. R. McCormick; first winter home for Henry M. Flagler 1893; moved to the oceanfront as part of the Breakers Hotel in 1913; 1984 moved near its original lakefront location by the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach." Preservation society. 

Right next door to where the Seagull Cottage was moved to is the Palm Beach Royal Poinciana Chapel. 

Many brides get the wonderful opportunity of having their weddings in Palm Beach at the Royal Poinciana Chapel. We were there for the wedding of one of our dear friend's daughters in January. I posted a video of about 10 minutes of her wedding in case you would like to get a sample of the chapel and surroundings. It was a very beautiful ceremony.  

The grassy areas in the back of the church are magnificent for taking your once in a lifetime wedding photos with backdrops you may not find anywhere else. 

Copyright © by Katerina Gasset 2010 * All Rights Reserved* Living In Palm Beach Florida- A Premier Luxury Community With A Home Town Feel.

 

Palm Beach Florida- Back In The Day- Guess Who Trivia! 

 

Palm Beach Florida was really popping in the era between World War I and the Great Depression!

Florida was really the rockin’ out place to be, to party and to live it up. 

 

So here are some highlights- trivia you may not know! 

 

 

• Al Capone dreamed of making his home in Boca Raton Florida. He started to settle there but was put into prison. He later settled in Miami where he lived out his years and died of syphilis. 

• John Dillinger and his gang fired machine guns into the air at a house in Palm Beach on New Year’s Eve of 1933-34. 

 

• Hoagy Carmichael was a clerk in a West Palm Beach law firm before he made his fortune in music. 

 

• In 1921 President Warren Harding pushed for the creation of the Intracoastal Waterway because he was stranded with some people in a channel near Fort Lauderdale. He never forgot his miserable day in Florida. 

 

• The famous Architect who inspired much of Boca Raton and Palm Beach’s homes and shopping centers- Addison Mizner- buried his pet spider monkey ‘Little Johnny Brown’ somewhere on Worth Avenue. For those of you who do not know, Worth Avenue is second only to Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. 

 

• Al Capone’s son was arrested in North Miami in 1965 for shoplifting aspirin and flashlight batteries totalling $3.50. 

 

• Babe Ruth was staying in Palm Beach in 1930 holding out for the salary of $85,000. He eventually signed a 2 year contract for $80,000 per year which was $5000 more than President Hoover made. This made Babe Ruth the highest paid baseball player in history. 

 

• George Gershwin stayed in Palm Beach to write the opera, ‘Porgy and Bess’ in 1935. 

 

• In 1929 Boca Raton banned public begging, brawling and stubborn children! 

• The first radio station in Palm Beach county was WJNO which opened on July 31, 1936. 

 

 

Do you have any Palm Beach Trivia to share? 

 

Make your own mark by selling your house with Nestor and Katerina Gasset- while we all have fun with trivia, there is nothing trivial about getting your house sold! 

 

Photo Credit to Nationaltrust.org blog. 

 

 

 

To  view Florida Short Sales- Click here. We know Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Florida Short Sales and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your home in Palm Beach County Florida : Call us today.

 

 

   

 

Palm Beach- Back In The Day- Guess Who Trivia! - Copyright © 2009 by Katerina Gasset* all rights reserved*

 

 

 

With so many short sales in South Florida it makes you wonder how has the downturn in the market affected the luxury home market.

There is a part of our county that you all know as Palm Beach Island. Palm Beach island is home to the worlds' biggest billionaires and movie stars. The Kennedy's even had a nuclear resistant bunker built out off the island on Peanut Island. You can take boat rides over there to see it and the Maritime museum.  Donald Trump's Mara Lago is here on the island. Donald Trump and his X wife Ivana Trump have properties on the island. Jimmy Buffet and Rod Stewart both have mansions on the island.

 

Here is the famous Breakers Hotel on Palm Beach Island where many rich and famous people stay. This hotel is our favorite here in Palm Beach County. It is right on the beach and is listed as one of the world's top 10 beaches according to travel T.V.

 

This island of Palm Beach has been immune against the downturn in the market. The one area that was still in demand was the multi million dollar properties on Palm Beach Island. This area became known as bullet proof.There are only a little over 10,000 people who live on the island and only 5800 households.

Well, now it looks like a bullet may have pierced this market with the fraud permeated by Madoff on this island. With the billions of dollars lost with Madoff here on the island it  remains to be seen if this is going to affect the property values on the island. I have a hunch it will.

There are some hedge fund managers that own mansions on the island and depending on how much they have lost will determine if they are going to have a fire sale on their mansions. How would you like to pick up a mansion worth $ 9 Million for about $7 million?

 

The other day someone went into the Madoff mansion and stole a very valuable statue of two copper lifeguards sitting on a bench valued at $10,000 from his mansion worth 9.5 Million dollars. Currently Madoff is under house arrest in his New York $7 million dollar apartment. There is a lot of anger around here towards Madoff.

Could this all mean that we may get some multi million dollar short sales on the island? Most of these people pay cash for their properties but you never know! For instance back in the spring of this year Randolf's Hearst's widow could no longer pay for the upkeep of their $30 million dollar mansion and she started to take out large loans just to pay her taxes and upkeep. The Hearst mansion was sold on the courthouse auction block for $22 million dollars. 

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Contact Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtors®, International Properties and Investments, Inc. Licensed Realtors® in Florida at 561-753-0135 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Lake Worth, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana, West Palm Beach and the rest of Palm Beach County Florida and Port St Lucie Florida. We are accepting referrals.

Read our Short Sale Series at Short-Sales-Florida.com.

To view all the Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale Click here and then click on Search For Homes We know Palm Beach County and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your Wellington Home or Land ; call us today.

Disclaimer:The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Wellington Homes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Palm Beach Florida Luxury Homes- Short Sales In The Luxury Market?*