From The Real Deal– read more here
September 18, 2015 09:45AM
By Dan Weil
Prices for homes in the town of Palm Beach, both single-family houses and condos, continue to soar, as wealthy Americans and foreigners remain enamored with the beachside paradise.
“People have no other place as attractive to put their money,” Les Evans, managing partner of Leslie Evans and Associates, a Palm Beach law firm, told The Real Deal.
His Evans Report, which details quarterly sales of Palm Beach homes, shows that the median price for a single-family home totaled $3.375 million in the second quarter, up 13.4 percent from $2.975 million a year earlier. In the biggest sale of the first six months of this year, hedge fund star Paul Tudor Jones bought the home at 1300 South Ocean Boulevard for $71.2 million from Dwight Schar, founder of homebuilder NVR.
In the condo markets, the median price registered $665,000 in the second quarter, up a whopping 23.1 percent from $540,000 a year ago.
Stocks haven’t performed nearly as well as Palm Beach homes, Evans noted. The S&P 500 Index climbed only 5.2 percent in the 12 months through June 30. The stock market’s recent volatility — the S&P 500 plunged 11 percent from Aug. 17 to Aug. 25 — will likely spur more interest in Palm Beach homes, local real estate professionals say.
“Homes are more stable,” Steve Davis, director of luxury sales at Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Palm Beach, told TRD. “You can hold, feel and enjoy them. They aren’t subject to daily fluctuations.”