Chicken Kitchen founder Christian de Berdouare and his wife, former TV journalist Jennifer Valoppi, just took out a $10 million mortgage on their luxury spec home on Miami Beach’s North Bay Road, property records show.
The couple received financing from Florida Community Bank, according to records.
The 17,055-square-foot waterfront home at 5004 North Bay Road hit the market while under construction in December 2014, for $35.9 million, or $2,105 per square foot, according to online listings. A little more than two years later, the asking price of the recently completed mansion remains the same.
De Berdouare was not immediately available for comment.
Named “Bakara Sesto Senso,” the resort-style mansion features seven bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and a nearly 3,500-square-foot third floor rooftop deck with infinity-edge pool. It was designed by architect Zeb Jarosz, and comes complete with custom-built Italian furnishings.
Jarosz is known for designing homes for Dan Marino and Matt Damon. He also designed a 40,000-square-foot mansion for Michael Jordan in Jupiter. The home’s interior designer is New York-based Jennifer Post Design, and the landscape architect is Raymond Jungles.
“I have assembled a world-class team and built a pretty exceptional house,” de Berdouare previously told The Real Deal. “It was never intended to be a spec house.”
Among the home’s features are two kitchens, two pools, an open atrium with a vertical garden, a private movie theater with seating for eight people, a wine room and a private gym. The master suite has a 9-foot by 5-foot marble bathtub carved out of a single slab of Carrara Statuario marble, which weighs more than 6,000 pounds and required special structural engineering of the entire home. The home also has a six car garage.
Though de Boudouare has not dropped the price of the recently completed home, price cuts are increasingly common as luxury home sellers adjust to the market in South Florida.
Last month a North Bay Road spec home by developer Peter Fine cut its asking price by 11.6 percent to $26.95 million. The asking price of the 15,000-square-foot waterfront mansion at 6440 North Bay Road equates to about $1,796 per square foot.