Palm Beach lot with town-OK'd house plans brings $12M. What will new 'spec' home look like?

Once again, a Palm Beach real estate sale has showcased the powerful appeal of a vacant lot with a town-approved house, this time with a sale recorded at $12 million for a lot at 216 Tradewind Drive on the North End.

A partnership between longtime developers Cushing Investments and Courchene Development bought the property. The oversize lot sold with house plans approved by the town’s Architectural Commission for a five-bedroom house with about 5,000 square feet of living space, inside and out.

“The house was already approved — that’s why we bought it,” Richard Cushing True, who runs Cushing Investments in Palm Beach, told the Palm Beach Daily News. The buyers plan to build the house on speculation, unless a would-be buyer commits early enough to transform the project into a custom home, True added.

Paul Courchene, who heads Boca Raton-based Courchene Development, joined True in the purchase. The buyers’ side also includes two of Courchene Development’s principals — Roger Ogilbee and Courchene’s sister, Janet Courchene Little. True and the Courchene group have developed and sold other properties in Palm Beach .

A trust named after the property’s address was the selling entity in the off-market sale recorded July 22. Serving as trustee was accountant Michael S. Kehoe, a partner at the Baker Tilley accounting firm’s office in Philadelphia. He declined to comment.

The Palm Beach Daily News previously reported that the sellers behind the trust are a North End couple whose identity remains cloaked because of privacy rules governing trusts. The lot measures a little less than half an acre and is on a prime street, three blocks north of the Palm Beach Country Club. The property is the third one west of the beach.

Buyers who purchase a property with already approved architectural plans can significantly shorten the timeframe for breaking ground on a new house, Palm Beach real estate observers say. Not only can buyers shave months off the initial planning process, but they can avoid entirely the Architectural Commission’s sometimes lengthy review process. An architectural review can be especially costly if the board demands repeated revisions.

True said his team hopes to have building permits in hand shortly. If all goes as expected, he said, the house could be finished sometime in the fall of 2025.

True was already familiar with the property. In April 2021, he and an investment partner sold it for a recorded $11 million to the trust that just parted with it. When the property changed hands in 2021, a 1960s-era house stood on the lot but was later razed.

The couple behind the trust that just sold the lot had originally planned to build a custom home, the Palm Beach Daily News has reported. After buying the property, they had contractor Carl Sabatello of Sabatello Cos. in Palm Beach Gardens shepherd their original design through the architectural review process.

But neighbors objected to that design, criticizing it as out of scale with the neighborhood. The Architectural Commission agreed and in a 5-2 vote killed the project in December 2021 .

The owners then changed their plans. They decided to develop instead a house on speculation for sale and switched architects, although Sabatello remained involved. The Architectural Commission ended up blessing the new design by Miami architect Rafael Portuondo this past February. But ground was never broken on the project.

Corcoran Group agent Bill Yahn represented the selling side in the just-closed sale. Yahn declined to comment about his clients or specifics of the transaction. True, who also is a Corcoran agent, handled his partnership’s interest in the deal.

Plans for the house designed by Portuondo — principal of Portuondo Perotti Architects — show a foyer with a curved staircase as well as a formal living room and a formal dining room. The kitchen would be open to a family room, where glass doors would access a poolside loggia with an arched colonnade. Other outdoor areas would include a dining loggia on one end of the house and a second-floor terrace.

“It’s a beautiful house. The design is amazing,” True said.

In addition to the house plans, other selling points were the size of the lot and its proximity to an access point to the beach on the other side of the coastal road, he said.

“It’s a unique lot. You can’t find lots of this size easily on the North End. They are very desirable,” True said.

The buyers bought the property through 216 Tradewinds LLC, a Delaware-registered limited liability company, the deed shows. The document lists the company’s address as the office of Courchene Development. The sellers’ trust has a mailing address in care of the Gunster law firm’s office in West Palm Beach.

True and partner David G. Lambert had initially bought the property for $7 million in December 2021. Although they commissioned an architect to design a house for the lot, they flipped the property before the design made it through the architectural review process.

It’s not unusual in Palm Beach for buildable lots to change hands with town-approved house plans. In April, for instance, a company co-managed by builder Marc Julien of Marc Julien Homes in Delray Beach paid a recorded $8.5 million for a vacant North End lot at 220 Arabian Road . The lot was sold with plans for a house approved by the Architectural Commission. The plans likely helped increase the value of the lot, which last changed hands for a recorded $4.6 million in February 2023.

Also in April, Malasky Homes sold, for a recorded $43.77 million, a house it developed on speculation at 205 Via Tortuga in Phipps Estates after buying the property — along with plans approved by the Architectural Commission — for $9.4 million in October 2020 .

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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. Subscribe today to support our journalism.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach lot with town-OK'd house plans brings $12M. What will new 'spec' home look like?