Billionaire media tycoon Barry Diller is in contract to buy Bruce Beal Jr.’s waterfront North Bay Road property in Miami Beach for a record $45 million, sources told The Real Deal.
Diller is buying the 1.5 acre waterfront property at 5930 North Bay Road in an off-market deal from Beal’s Bay Road Property LLC. Beal is a president and partner at New York-based Related Companies.
The deal marks a price record for waterfront North Bay Road properties.
Brett Harris of Douglas Elliman, and Reid Heidenry and Marko Gojanovic of One Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer. Mick Duchon of Corcoran Group represented the seller.
Gojanovic declined to comment on the identities of the buyer and seller, as well as any plans for the currently vacant lot. Duchon also declined to comment on the deal.
The land was formerly the site of the Whitehall Mansion (not the Henry Flagler estate of the same name in Palm Beach). The storied estate was rumored to be the rendezvous point for John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. The 13,600-square-foot mansion had nine bedrooms, a pool and a helipad. Beal tore it down after buying it for $18.5 million in 2018 from convicted tax evaders, Mauricio Cohen Assor and his son Leon Cohen-Levy, owners of the Flatotel chain. They were found guilty of concealing more than $150 million in assets and failing to report $49 million in income, and a federal judge sentenced them to 10 years in prison in 2011.
Since the 2018 deal, prices for waterfront property on North Bay Road and around South Florida have soared, fueled by an influx of well-heeled buyers. Among them, now, is Diller, the chairperson of IAC and Expedia Group and founder of the Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. Diller has an estimated net worth of $4.2 billion, according to Forbes. He and his wife, designer Diane von Furstenburg, were major funders and proponents of New York City’s Little Island park on the west side of Manhattan.
Recent North Bay Road real estate activity includes a jeweler’s sale of a waterfront home for $22.9 million in June. In August, venture capitalist Chris Burch listed his waterfront mansion for $49 million, but it has since been removed from the market.