The Indian Creek Island home of financier Charles Johnson sold for $30 million on Monday, marking the second sale on the exclusive enclave within three days.
Nelson Gonzalez of Esslinger Wooten Maxwell/Christie’s represented both the seller — the retired founder of Franklin Templeton Funds — and the buyer of 17 Indian Creek Island Road. Gonzalez declined to disclose the buyer, other than to say he is “a foreign immigrant who lives in the Northwest and has business ties to Miami.”
“For now, it’s a vacation home,” Gonzalez told The Real Deal, “but he is looking to move there permanently.”
The 16,393-square-foot waterfront estate sits on an 80,000-square-foot lot and has five bedrooms, five baths and three half-baths.
Built in 2002, the property has 255 feet of open bay view with large concrete docks and lifts. The home also features vaulted ceilings, Corinthian columns, large terraces, fireplaces, a wine room, summer kitchen and four-car garage.
“It’s a very nice Palm Beach style house,” Gonzalez told TRD. “In my opinion, it is one of the best lots on the island because of where it is located. It is pie-shaped, so although most lots have 200 feet on the water, it has 255 feet, and a southwest view, so it’s a beautiful view of the Miami skyline, with sunrises, sunsets. You get it all.”
The sale comes three days after an undislosed foreign buyer paid $23 million for an 80,000-square-foot vacant lot with a dock at 2 Indian Creek Island Road. Jill Eber and Jill Hertzberg of the Jills, of Coldwell Banker, represented the seller, from South America.
Veronica Cervera Goeseke, CEO of Cervera Real Estate, along with son Nickel M. Goeseke, represented the buyer. She said the family intends to build a home to live on the island.
Indian Creek is a private playground for the ultra-wealthy, with just about three dozen homes, each with waterfront views on lots in excess of an acre. Among its residents are some of America’s 500 wealthiest people, according to Forbes, including activist investor Carl Icahn, car dealership mogul Norman Braman and hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert. Still other residents include singer Julio Iglesias, retired Dolphins coach Don Shula, Colombian banker Jaime Galinski, Turnberry Associates co-CEOs Jackie Soffer and brother Jeffrey Soffer and his wife Elle Macpherson, and Spanish-language TV personality “Don Francisco,” whose real name is Mario Kreutzberger.
“Indian Creek is doing incredibly well,” Gonzalez said. “There’s really almost nothing left to buy.”