As Featured in The Palm Beach Post, Contributed by Kimberly Miller.
Link to read the full article.
A coveted scratch of waterfront property will soon sprout three ultra-luxury condos by prolific and charismatic builder Dan Catalfumo, who called the indulgent Landing at PGA Waterway his legacy.
About 11 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway at PGA Boulevard that was once home to Panama Hattie’s Seafood House and Rum Bar is the site for Catalfumo’s latest development, which he describes as 98 opulent “residences in the sky.”
A rendering of the Landing at PGA Waterway, a new luxury waterfront community on the Intracoastal Waterway Catalfumo Companies. Residences start at
$3.9 million.
Although the proposal, which includes a marina and 23 boat slips, still faces a final approval in May by Palm Beach County commissioners, Catalfumo is confident it will be endorsed.
“It’s going through the process, but everyone loves it. It’s zoned for 128 units – we’re only dong 98,” Catalfumo said. “I’ve had this vision to do something that hasn’t been done before, and we’re going full steam ahead.”
The six-story buildings on the east side of the Intracoastal south of PGA Boulevard will have 850 feet of waterfront with boat slips available for vessels up to 75 feet long. Amenities include an infinity-edge pool, spa, fitness center, waterfront clubhouse, lounge and on-site concierge services. Plans call for 350 underground parking spaces.
With prices starting at nearly $4 million, buyers can choose from eight-floor plans ranging from 3,100 to 5,000 square feet. Units include 12-foot wraparound balconies, open floor plans showcasing panoramic waterfront views, a smart-home control system and chef-worthy kitchens.
“We had a professional chef come in and look at the floor plans and he was really impressed,” Catalfumo said. “I told him, ‘I’m Italian – I cook every night.’ “Catalfumo said he finished assembling a handful of properties in October with a deed filed reflecting a purchase of seven parcels for $33 million.
The project site has a tumultuous history.
Previous owner and Harbourside Place developer Nicholas Mastroianni III faced criticism for demolishing Panama Hattie’s, which closed in 2014. Later, Palm Beach Gardens sued Palm Beach County over its approval for 70 condos originally submitted by Mastroianni for the site, which has remained vacant.
Catalfumo also traveled a bumpy road after the 2007 recession forced him to sell off properties and tussle with lenders to settle debts. But in 2019, he was back with plans for PGA Station at the southeast corner of PGA Boulevard and RCA Boulevard, where he’s building 400 apartments and a new office building.
He said he wants the Landing at PGA Waterway to be upscale elegance beyond what anyone has seen in Palm Beach County – a tall order considering the posh homes of tony Palm Beach, Jupiter Island and Manalapan.
A rendering of the Landing at PGA Waterway. Amenities include an infinity-edge pool, spa, fitness center, waterfront clubhouse, lounge and on-site concierge services. Residences start at $3.9 million.
“We truly said we want something that can’t be reproduced,” Catalfumo said. “If you can dream it, we’ve got it. It’s that simple.”
Brad Hunter, president of Hunter Housing Economics, said there is a huge demand for new luxury waterfront development in Palm Beach County.
“The luxury condo market has been strong for decades, so that’s not entirely new, but I will say also that the luxury market in Palm Beach County is absolutely on fire now because of the influx of people we’ve seen from New York and other points in the Northeast,” Hunter said. “It’s a continuation of a trend, but it’s been thrown into high gear.”
Hunter noted companies such as Goldman Sachs bringing well-paid workers to Palm Beach County as one reason for the uptick in demand for luxury housing. Other financial services and private equity firms including Point 72and Elliott Management are putting down roots in West Palm Beach.
Last month, the leader of mortgage lender NewDay USA bought the entire 7-story Crystal condominium on the Intracoastal in West Palm Beach for $16.92 million. NewDay USA is expected to bring 600 jobs to Palm Beach County. It was unclear last month what the new building, which had never been lived in, will be used for.
“The market is 100% there right now, especially in the luxury sector,” said Talbot Sutter, president and broker of Sutter and Nugent real estate. “We just listed a $4.5 million condo in The Bear’s Club and have people seeing it from all over the world.”
The Bear’s Club is an upscale gated golf community in Jupiter.
In March, 148 condominiums or townhomes sold for $1 million or more, according to a report from Florida Realtors. That’s an 18% increase in that price range from March 2021. About 295 single-family homes sold for $1 million or more last month, which is a 6.5% increase from the previous year.
Kevin Spina, director of The Spina Group at the Keyes Company, which is handling sales for the Landing at PGA Waterway, said the development’s more than 800 feet of waterfront is “unheard of” in northern Palm Beach County.
“You cannot beat this location,” Spina said.
The sales center for the Landing at PGA Waterway is scheduled to open in June, with the residences finished by late 2024.
Residences at Landing at PGA Waterway start at $3.9M with pre-sales to commence June 1st. The project is slated to break ground in the third quarter of 2022.
As Featured in Forbes, Contributed by Peter Lane Taylor.
Link to read the full article.
Contrary to various public misconceptions, Mar-a-Lago—the exclusive Atlantic oceanfront resort that frequently served as former President Donald Trump’s “Winter White House”—didn’t make Palm Beach, Florida’s lavish real estate and lifestyle famous for the first time around.
The Sunshine State’s “Playground for the Wealthy” long has been uber-posh, dating back to the late 1880s when oil tycoon Henry Flagler first built The Breakers and The Royal Poinciana Hotel which eventually became the centerpieces of his luxury, southern hospitality empire catering to northern old money and spawning the now infamous “Billionaire’s Row”.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise either that even after Trump’s 2020 Oval Office departure, Palm Beach’s luxury real estate market isn’t showing any signs of decelerating even if Air Force One isn’t landing in town anymore.
Writ large, part of the froth is because South Florida in general has been on a bull market run since even before the pandemic.
Low taxes, warm weather, business friendly regulations, and burgeoning innovation ecosystems were already luring finance firms, tech start-ups, and executives to Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Tampa, and Orlando before 2020 as fast as California and New York could shed them. COVID-19 just widened the highways and threw away the speed limits.
The compounding in-migration over past few years, however, has resulted in one of the most unsubtle real estate ironies here in decades: after years of booms, busts, and frequently tumbling prices, South Florida now has a big-time housing and inflation crisis that few people were anticipating.
At the highest ends in places like Palm Beach—a.k.a. “Wall Street South”—where billionaires, CEOs, sports stars, and celebrities like Tiger Woods, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Wynn, Jon Bon Jovi, and Ken Griffin have been digging in for years, the supply crunch is even more acute.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Palm Beach County’s luxury, single-family homes sales—including Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Islands—have increased by 53.5% year-over-year while the average time on market has plummeted to 58 days in the first quarter of 2022, a 57.2% year-over-year drop. In North Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens specifically, where only 89 active single-family listings are currently active, home sales are up 68% year-over-year with total volume jumping from $678 million to $1.34 billion.
Similarly eye-popping, the numbers for Palm Beach County’s mid- and high-rise condo sub-market aren’t far behind: average days on market decreased by 41% in 2021 over the same period in 2020, while first quarter 2022 luxury condo closings are up 54% from 2020.
Developers and real estate investors are rightly trying to keep up.
Related Group recently announced plans to bring a new Ritz-Carlton Residences high rise to West Palm Beach, while South Flagler House, a $400 million luxury condominium, is on track to become one of the most expensive residential developments in the U.S.
Meanwhile, multi-million dollar condo projects that have been under construction for years are well-timed to start absorbing buyers starting in the next few months, like Amrit Ocean Resort & Residences, SeaGlass, Nautilus 220, Icon, La Clara, Forte, and Alba.
Notwithstanding all of this new inventory, however, a lot of the long-term drivers behind Palm Beach’s supply crisis aren’t easily tractable—which other similarly tight and tony zip codes in Silicon Valley, Long Island, and Los Angeles could learn from. Many of the buildings about open up were sold out months ago or pre-sold pre-pandemic so they’re not even putting a dent in existing or future demand.
Land is also scarce, sprawling, multi-generational estates are common, and most residents who have lived here for years whether full or part-time roundly agree that if you already own one of the few waterfront properties available why not hold onto it, especially when price appreciation is outpacing the bull stock market?
Each of these factors individually is an incentive for developers to build. But for locals collectively, they’re a glaring red light not to sell, particularly when it comes to single-family homes and estates. There’s also no small bit of NIMBYism (“Not In My Back Yard”) invisibly at work here when it comes to the prospect of denser, more overtly visible developments.
All of which means that every new Palm Beach luxury real estate project which adds new inventory while simultaneously satisfying the increasing demand for larger floor plans, hotel-style amenities, and waterfront views at scale is great for prospective buyers and companies looking to relocate here—and even better for the developers building them.
This fundamental shift—from South Florida’s historically dense condo model to full-floor, all-glass, single-family, high-tech, high- and mid-rise “residences”—a.k.a. “homes in the sky”—is no small turning point. Developers will need to change their design, technology, and financing paradigms. Buyers will need to be patient.
What is clear to anyone paying attention, however, is that these trends for more space, more resort-level, work-from-home luxuries, better, high-touch service, deeper experiences, and longer horizon investing on the part of buyers are here to stay.
Given this context, the announcement by long-time Palm Beach-based developer Catalfumo Companies that it’s just launched the Landing at PGA Waterway is huge news for one of America’s most inventory starved cities.
“Palm Beach Gardens has become the ultimate, luxury real estate enclave in South Florida,” says founder Dan Catalfumo. “It’s now attracting even more refined and notable individuals relocating to the area. And from this came the inspiration for Landing at just the right time.”
The Landing will offer 98 flow-through three, four, and five-bedroom residences ranging from 3,100 to 5,000 square feet spread out over three, 6-story buildings on the last remaining 11 contiguous acres of open land in Palm Beach Gardens directly on the Intracoastal Waterway with yacht access to Lake Worth, Palm Beach Inlet, and Jupiter Inlet.
The development will also include a private, 26-slip marina for power and sailboats up to 75′, 100-foot infinity-edge swimming pool, resort-style cabanas, a clubhouse, spa, guesthouse suites, high-tech in-unit features and finishes, and an on-site concierge.
If anything about the Landing at PGA Waterway sounds over-amenitized given Palm Beach’s supply crunch, it’s not.
“This is what today’s market and buyer demands,” says Kevin Spina, Sales Director of The Spina Team of Landing’s luxury “sky villa” approach to merging single-family home space and design with the amenities and service of a 5-star resort.
“Palm Beach County is now a flourishing hub as major companies are migrating to the ‘Wall Street of the South’. We are excited to bring Landing at PGA Waterway to this thriving market and anticipate that it will transform the way we understand and experience luxury waterfront living.”
Residences at Landing at PGA Waterway start at $3.9M with pre-sales to commence June 1st. The project is slated to break ground in the third quarter of 2022.