Venture capitalist Robert Burch and his wife, Susan, parted with their Palm Beach home of nearly three decades, selling the estate for $24 million.
Records show the Burchs sold the house at 124 Brazilian Avenue to Gulf Stream Trust, with Palm Beach-based attorney Stuart Haft signing as trustee. The true buyer is unknown.
Robert Burch is managing partner and CEO of the New York City-based venture capital firm Redbadge. In the 1980s, he started the apparel brand Eagle’s Eye with his brother, J. Christopher Burch, who is currently CEO of Burch Creative Capital and is the former husband of designer Tory Burch.
Gary Pohrer of Douglas Elliman had the listing, and Patricia Mahaney of Sotheby’s International Realty brought the buyer.
The Burchs bought the 0.4-acre estate for $1 million in 1993, records show. Built in 1925, the home spans 6,755 square feet, with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms, according to the listing. The property also includes a pool, spa, and guest house, and sits just one lot in from the island’s oceanside beach.
The sellers renovated the home at some point during their ownership, Pohrer said, however he was unsure of the year.
According to Pohrer, the selling price shows “how in-demand things are when they’re finished.” He also mentioned the property’s proximity to town and its double lot as features that drove the price.
Palm Beach is not the only luxury market the Burchs have exited in recent years. Bloomberg reported in 2016 that the couple listed their 30,000-acre Montana ranch near Bozeman for $35 million. They sold the estate, a working cattle ranch run by four full-time cowboys, for nearly $30 million in 2017, according to Farm & Ranch.
Winter is Palm Beach’s busy season for tourists and part-time residents. It’s also when the real estate market picks up. After two years of a non-stop, pandemic-fueled buying frenzy in South Florida, brokers are saying seasonality has returned to the market.
“I think it’s going to be a late season,” Pohrer said, noting that most of his clients don’t plan to return to the island until after the holidays.
“Pre-Covid, we did about 70 percent of our business in February, March, April, May, which people forget,” he said.
To kick off the season, spec developer Todd Glaser and his partners re-listed Tarpon Island for $218 million. They’ve been renovating the property since they bought it for $85 million last year.
Over the summer, sales on the north end of the island — where homes come with deeded beach cabana access — drove the market. In August, a private equity chief bought the north end home of Charles A. Dana III, a son of the family behind the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, for $9.4 million. Michael Burns, a Chicago-based real estate investor, sold a home on Dolphin Road for $14.4 million in August and listed another on North Ocean Way for $18.5 million in October.