The South African buyer who paid $10 million for a waterfront Venetian Islands home last week with plans to tear it down and build a new mansion is none other than Allan Rosenzweig, the founder of the Evergreen Life Insurance Group.
Property records show a Delaware entity, North Point II LLC, bought the property at 28 West Dilido Drive on Di Lido Island. The entity, which is tied to a Palm Beach-based attorney, is managed by Rosenzweig, with an address in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. — also home to Evergreen’s headquarters.
Rosenzweig previously founded Intertax, a leading international tax firm in South Africa. He is active in insurance, asset-backed finance and international taxation.
Alain Berdouare, the brother of Chicken Kitchen founder Christian Berdouare, sold Rosenzweig the 13,400-square-foot property, which holds a house of just under 3,700 square feet. Berdouare paid $800,000 for the property in 1997.
At $746 per square foot for the land, the latest sale price represents a record in Miami Beach, according to Dora Puig of Luxe Living Realty, who said she represented both sides of the transaction.
Berdouare said he had planned to build a new home on the property for himself, but when the buyer came along in the off-market deal, he decided to sell. Neither he nor Puig could name the buyer, citing a confidentiality agreement, but sources had said he is from South Africa.
“The exposure and the location are fantastic. That is why the buyer chose this one,” Berdouare said. “He is very rich and paid the premium.”
Venetian Islands properties have been scoring high-priced sales in recent months. In February, venture capitalist Jim Goetz bought an 11,600-square-foot Di Lido Island mansion that sold for a record $22 million. In January, a French buyer paid $13.2 million for a newly built 7,076-square-foot home on San Marino Island. And in October, a finance executive paid $6 million for a waterfront San Marino teardown on a 9,953-square-foot lot, paying $610 per square foot for the land.