A billionaire car auction magnate wasted no time securing a waterfront Fort Lauderdale teardown for $15.5 million.
Within three days of the five-bedroom, two-and-half-bathroom house in Harbor Beach hitting the market, Jay Adair and his wife, Tammi Adair, were under contract, their broker Scott Patterson told The Real Deal. The couple offered to pay the full listing price, Patterson, of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty, added.
Records show an entity managed by the Adairs closed on the nearly one-acre property at 2541 Laguna Terrace. The home was completed in 1958. The seller is Larry Don Davis, who bought the property for $1.5 million in 1996. He was represented by Barbara Panton and Mobley McClellan with Fisher McClellan Real Estate.
The property has 555 feet of water frontage on three sides, according to a Zillow listing. It is in the Laguna Isles section of Harbor Beach. Patterson said Jay Adair was hunting for a waterfront property that could accommodate a new 160-foot yacht he is buying.
“As soon as I found this property, he and his wife flew out the next day to see it,” Patterson said. “It is one of the few places you can have that much dockage, and it is on a secluded lagoon. That is what they fell in love with.”
Jay Adair is CEO of Copart, a Dallas-based online automobile auction dealer founded by his father-in-law, Willis Johnson. Forbes pegs Adair’s net worth at $1.4 billion, ranking him No. 2,674 among the world’s richest people. Patterson said the couple also own a California vineyard, and that the Fort Lauderdale property will likely be their third home.
The Adairs plan on tearing down the existing house and replacing it with a mansion, Patterson added. The property was previously listed in 2018 for $8 million, but was taken off the market in 2020.
Harbor Beach remains one of the most sought after secluded residential neighborhoods by luxury buyers.
In October, Steve Poulos, CEO of Chicago-based Bridge Development Partners, and his wife, Colleen Poulos, bought a new house at 72 Isla Bahia Drive for $14 million. A month earlier, Texas developer Shahram Khaledi and his wife, Elka Khaledi, paid $10.5 million for retired NBA icon Scottie Pippen’s former waterfront estate at 2571 Del Lago Drive.