David Cassidy’s former Fort Lauderdale home sells for $2.6 million

Yet another buyer will have an opportunity to come on and get happy at David Cassidy’s former Fort Lauderdale waterfront home.

This time, a Los Angeles-based real estate investor has purchased the six-bedroom, 7,167-square-foot house at 1600 S. Ocean Drive, in the city’s Harbor Beach neighborhood.

Amy L. Raff and her husband, Abe Rotchel, weren’t looking to buy Cassidy’s house when they started scouting South Florida’s real estate listings.

“It turned out to just be a nice benefit that it used to be his house,” Raff said in an interview. “It’s a fabulous home in a great location.”

Cassidy, star of television’s The Partridge Family in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was a shaggy-maned teen idol who frequently adorned the covers of magazines targeted to adolescent girls. Raff said she had his poster on her wall when she was a young girl. “He was beautiful, but it’s very sad what happened to him.”

After buying the house for $1.1 million in 2001, Cassidy lived in it with his then-wife, Susan Shifrin-Cassidy, from 2002 until 2015, when the couple divorced and the former star declared bankruptcy.

He was arrested on DUI charges three times between 2010 and 2014, then sentenced to probation for a hit and run on Interstate 595 in 2015.

In 2017, Cassidy announced he was suffering from dementia and retiring as a performer. He died later that year after he was hospitalized with liver and kidney disease.

After Cassidy declared bankruptcy, the house sold at auction for $2 million to investors from Maryland who rented it out, complete with Cassidy memorabilia on display, for short-term vacations. In 2018, it was listed for sale for $3.9 million.

Raff said she and her husband plan extensive renovations to modernize the interior and the outside pool and patio area. They plan to move to the area by the end of summer to oversee the project, which Raff hopes will be chronicled on a home makeover-type TV program.

Once the renovation is complete, the couple plans to move into the home.

They’ve wanted to move to South Florida for a long time, she said. She knows the state well. Her parents moved to Ocala and opened a McDonalds in 1959. In the 1970s, she frequently visited her grandparents in Hallandale Beach.

Meanwhile, potential tenants still have a brief opportunity to live in Cassidy’s former home. It’s listed for rent with Esti Kadosh of Coldwell Banker for $25,000 a month.