Record Breaking Sale for Palm Beach
“Billionaire William Lauder is the buyer of Rush Limbaugh’s longtime Palm Beach estate, which sold for a record $155 million, according to people familiar with the transaction.
The roughly 2.7-acre waterfront property on tony North Ocean Boulevard contains multiple houses, records show. It has roughly 250 feet of ocean frontage and direct access to the beach. Mr. Limbaugh, a conservative talk-radio icon who died in 2021, purchased the property for $3.9 million in 1998, records show.
Mr. Lauder is the executive chairman of beauty giant Estée Lauder Companies. He recently listed two parcels in Palm Beach with about 360 feet of ocean frontage for a combined $200 million. He bought one of the properties, a roughly 1-acre parcel, for just under $25.4 million in 2020, records show. He purchased the second property, spanning about 1.8 acres, for an undisclosed price in 2021. Both lots had houses that were demolished.
The Limbaugh property was quietly on the market last year asking $150 million to $175 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.The roughly 24,000-square-foot main house, built in West Indies style, was largely decorated by Mr. Limbaugh himself, according to the 2010 book “An Army of One” by Zev Chafets. There is a vast salon meant to invoke Versailles, the book said, and a dining room chandelier that is a replica of the one in New York’s Plaza Hotel.The $155 million sale is a record for Palm Beach. Private-equity executive Scott Shleifer paid $122.7 million for an oceanfront mansion in 2021, and hedge funder Ken Griffin paid $129.6 million for four parcels in 2013. Last year, Oracle Corp. co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison paid $173 million for a home in nearby Manalapan.”
Written by E.B. Solomont at eb.solomont@wsj.com and Katherine Clarke at Katherine.Clarke@wsj.com