Kings Road sale: Palm Beach house near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club sells for $14 million

An updated 1950s-era house at 168 Kings Road, near former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, has changed hands for $14 million, according to an updated sales listing in the multiple listing service

The house is the sixth of the 18 homes along Kings Road to change hands since October 2020, property records show. That was the same year the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Palm Beach and helped spark an unexpected residential real estate rush fueled by Florida's favorable tax advantages for out-of-state buyers.

In the most recent sale on Kings Road, Jane B. Baird sold No. 168 as trustee of a family trust in her name and was joined on the deed by her husband, Girard P. Brownlow. 

The buyer was a Delaware-registered limited liability company named after the property’s address, according to the deed recorded at the Palm Beach County Courthouse. The buying entity has a mailing address on the document that matches that of Martin & Lunger, a legal practice in Wilmington, Delaware, the company’s website shows. Because of Delaware's strict corporate privacy laws, no other information about the buyer was immediately available in public records.

The five-bedroom house’s front is a picture-perfect example of Palm Beach Regency-style architecture, with its largely symmetrical façade, flat roof, porch topped with a triangular pediment and classical design elements, including decorative urns at the roofline.

Baird, through her trust, had owned the house since 2013, when it changed hands for a recorded $4 million.

The house has 5,377 square feet of living space, inside and out, property records show. It stands on a dry lot of about two-fifths of an acre on the second street north of Mar-a-Lago. The house is the second one east of the Intracoastal Waterway.

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The house has been “meticulously renovated and maintained,” according to the sales listing prepared by agents Lisa and John Cregan of Sotheby’s International Realty. The Cregans and Baird declined to comment about the sale.

The Cregans listed the house for $14.9 million in late March, the MLS shows. The sale closed Sept. 19.

Agents Brooke A. Murphy and Kyle Blackmon of Compass Florida handled the buyer’s side. Murphy declined to discuss the transaction.

The home’s interiors were completely overhauled by the previous owners, Tom and Judi Embrescia, who reworked part of the floorplan, according to a 2013 story in the Palm Beach Daily News.

More recent improvements included a reworking of the two-car garage, an adjacent wine-storage room and a guest apartment that could be used to accommodate household staff, according to the Cregans’ listing. Crews also made improvements to the backyard pool area and landscaping, replaced the air-conditioning system and added a full-house generator.

Other features include ceilings ranging from 11 feet to 12 feet high and “multiple spaces for entertaining and guests,” the Cregans’ sales listing said.

The primary bedroom has dual baths and closets.

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Kings Road traverses land that was once home to the fabled Cielito Lindo, Jessie Woolworth Donahue’s massive ocean-to-lake mansion finished in 1927 in the Estate Section, just north of rival Marjorie Merriweather Post's Mar-a-Lago. Cielito Lindo was subdivided in the late 1940s into five houses to make way for the then-new Kings Road, which went straight through what had been the mansion's living room.

Since late 2020, houses on Kings Road have sold at prices ranging from $4.6 million to the just-recorded $14 million for No. 168.

Of those homes that changed hands recently, a new home completed in 2019 at 140 Kings Road sold twice — initially for $8.41 million in October 2020 and then again for $11.5 million about six months later.

The effects of the pandemic-powered real estate rush also can be seen at 145 Kings Road, a house that sold for $4.25 million in January 2020, two months before the health crisis began in earnest. That house changed hands in June 2021 at $8.45 million, according to courthouse records. The same house, which underwent recent renovations, had until late August been marketed for sale in the Palm Beach Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service at $24.5 million. Although the listing for No. 145 has been withdrawn, the property remains available off market at the same price, the Palm Beach Daily News confirmed.

A search of the MLS on Friday showed two other houses for sale on the street, including 153 Kings Road, listed at $18.95 million. And an oceanview house on the northwest corner of the street at 1070 S. Ocean Blvd. has an asking of $25 million.

One other house on the street was until recently listed for sale in the MLS, but is still for sale. On the southwest corner of Kings Road, that new never-lived-in mansion at 1080 S. Ocean Blvd. is asking $28.85 million.

dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com 

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This story was updated Sept. 26, 2023 — the day the deed for the sale of 168 Kings Road was recorded — to add information about the buyer's side of the sale. This is a developing story. Check back for updates. 

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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. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach house near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club sells for $14 million