Priced at $65M, an ocean-to-lake estate in Manalapan near Palm Beach returns to market

Darrell Hofheinz, Palm Beach Daily News
Updated ·5 min read
Just listed for about $65 million, an ocean-to-lake estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach has Mediterranean-inspired architecture. The sellers bought the property in January 2023 for a recorded $48.37 million.
Just listed for about $65 million, an ocean-to-lake estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach has Mediterranean-inspired architecture. The sellers bought the property in January 2023 for a recorded $48.37 million.

A furnished ocean-to-lake estate that changed hands early this year near Palm Beach has re-entered the market at about $65 million, the asking price nearly 33% higher than the sale price publicly documented when it sold in January.

The estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan — the wealthy town south of Palm Beach — changed hands nine months ago for a recorded $48.37 million. The furnishings were included in that deal, but it’s unclear if the price recorded with the deed reflected their value.

The new asking price is more in line with $62.998 million price tag the property carried when it sold just after the New Year.

With 1.85 acres and about 200 feet of oceanfront, the property includes a narrow lakefront parcel with the same amount of waterfront on the west side of the coastal road.

Known as Villa Oceano Azul, the estate was completed in 2015 and includes a two-story, six-bedroom house with a separate single-story, one-bedroom guesthouse. In all, there are 20,712 square feet of living space, inside and out.

The property lies about 1½ miles south of the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa and the bridge to Lake Worth Beach, property records show.

Seen with the red roof in the foreground, an estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. stretches between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway in Manalapan near Palm Beach. The property was just listed for $64.995 million.
Seen with the red roof in the foreground, an estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. stretches between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway in Manalapan near Palm Beach. The property was just listed for $64.995 million.

The sellers are Rama Raju Mantena and his wife, Padmaju, who have longtime residential ties to Jupiter, according to property records. Among his business ventures, he is chairman and CEO of Ingenus Pharmaceuticals, an Orlando-headquartered company that produces generic drugs, according to its website.

Agent Mark A. Griffin of The Bear's Club Sotheby's International Realty holds the new listing. He also represented the Mantenas when they bought the estate in January.

Griffin and his clients declined to comment about the listing.

Estate in Manalapan near Palm Beach has two swimming pools

Among its features, the property has two swimming pools, with one facing the ocean. There also is a 50-foot, “full-service” concrete dock in the Intracoastal Waterway with a boat lift, according to Griffin’s sales listing.

The ocean side of the main house has a covered patio, a built-in barbecue grill and a summer kitchen. Multiple windows, glass doors and second-floor terraces capture wide views of the Atlantic.

An oceanview loggia looks out to one of the two swimming pools at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach. The estate is priced at about $65 million.
An oceanview loggia looks out to one of the two swimming pools at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach. The estate is priced at about $65 million.

FROM THE 2022 ARCHIVES: Waterfront estate in Manalapan sells for $173 million, setting a new residential price record for Florida

The estate offers garage parking for six cars and 10 additional spaces.

The layout includes a living room, a formal dining room, a breakfast area off the center-island kitchen, a media room and a family room. The master bedroom has two bathrooms and a sitting room. Other features include a cabana bath, two elevators, a snack bar, and floors covered in marble and wood.

The guesthouse has its own living room, a full kitchen, a separate powder room, a laundry room and an attached three-car garage.

The estate is “offered fully furnished and turnkey with transitional coastal inspired interiors by Marc-Michaels Interior Design,” according to Griffin’s sales listing, which entered the multiple listing service Sept. 15 with a price of $64.995 million.

The listing mentions the estate’s 11-zone heating-and-air-conditioning system, smart-home automation system, whole-house generator, and impact-resistant glass windows and exterior doors.

The main residence at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach has an oceanfront living room.
The main residence at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. in Manalapan near Palm Beach has an oceanfront living room.

The Mantenas bought the estate from businessman Francis A. Mennella and his wife, Dolores. The Mennellas, in turn, had purchased the property from its developer, Carnegie Hill Development Corp., a company founded by real estate investor and businessman Stewart A. Satter, who today is Manalapan's vice mayor. The house was built by Dale Construction.

Like all Manalapan properties, the estate will be sold with a gratis membership to La Coquille Club, part of the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa.

In January’s sale, the Mennellas were represented by Philip Lyle Smith and Carla Ferreira-Smith, broker-owners of Luxury Resort Portfolio. At the time of that sale, the Mennellas had moved into a custom home down the street on a 2-acre, ocean-to-lake lot at 1940 S. Ocean Blvd., which they bought in 2018 from a company controlled by singer Billy Joel.

The primary bedroom at a Manalapan estate near Palm Beach at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. has a sitting area with an ocean view.
The primary bedroom at a Manalapan estate near Palm Beach at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. has a sitting area with an ocean view.

Real estate in Manalapan took off during the pandemic-related boom

Manalapan experienced a far higher-than-average number of sales topping $20 million once the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 sent the South Florida real estate market into overdrive, as work-from-home buyers sought havens to weather the health crisis in a tax-friendly state. When deep-wallet home shoppers watched the available housing inventory for waterfront estates shrink in Palm Beach, they increasingly looked south to Manalapan and its ocean-to-lake properties.

The estate at 1400 S. Ocean Blvd. was listed at just under $63 million when it sold in January. But that price was down sharply from the $74.99 million asking price the property had carried when it first entered the MLS in January 2022 following a period of steep price escalation in town.

As in Palm Beach, sales have slowed over the past year in Manalapan. But asking prices for premium properties remain far higher than before the pandemic-sparked boom, real estate observers say.

Manalapan also is the town with the highest average home price in the country, according to a report released in April by financial-services company CashNetUSA. Using price data from the real estate website Zillow, analysts added up “house prices in each area and divided them by the number of properties to calculate the average price in every neighborhood,” a statement accompanying the report said. The average price of a house in Manalapan was $39.76 million — but that figure was skewed by a whopper of an outlying sale, the analysts noted. That $173 million sale in June 2022 of a 22-acre estate at 3000 S. Ocean Blvd., on the south end of town, set a new Florida residential record.

dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com

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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: Asking $65M, an estate in Manalapan near Palm Beach returns to market