A financier and his wife sold their Palm Beach home for $30.8 million in a deal linked to the billionaire family that owns Cox Enterprises, marking a significant luxury sale early in the island’s high season.
Records show Jay C. and Katherine Horgen sold the house at 322 Clarke Avenue to a Delaware entity named for the address and registered to the Atlanta headquarters of media conglomerate Cox Enterprises.
Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate had the listing, and Vince Spadea Jr. of Douglas Elliman brought the buyer.
Cox controls the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AutoTrader and Kelley Blue Book, among other brands. The firm remains privately held by the descendants of its founder, James M. Cox. Forbes pegs the family’s combined fortune at $26.8 billion. The company is currently led by Cox’s great-grandson Alex Taylor.
Cox heirs have long ties to Palm Beach, according to the Palm Beach Post. Taylor’s mother, Margaretta Taylor, owns the house at 120 El Brillo Way that she bought for $3.9 million in 1995, according to property records. Her sister, Katherine Rayner, owns a home at 216 Emerald Lane she bought for $1.3 million in 2000, records show.
The seller, Jay Horgen, is president and CEO of West Palm Beach-based investment firm AMG. He joined the firm in 2007, following a brief stint leading his own private equity firm, Eastside Partners.
The Horgens bought the Clarke Avenue house for $8.8 million in 2014, according to property records. It was built in 1929 on 0.4 acres, and spans nearly 6,100 square feet, records show. The home includes six bedrooms, six bathrooms, three half-bathrooms, a guest house and pool, according to the listing.
The home was originally built for Laurietta Ford von Stresenreuter and her second husband, Charles Filipponi, a waiter from Brooklyn who passed himself off in Palm Beach as an Italian noble named Count Carlo Filipponi, according to published reports.
The Horgens listed the house for $34.9 million in July, Redfin shows.
After a lull in the summer, the presidential election jumpstarted Palm Beach’s luxury real estate market, agents say. Last month, Barnes & Noble widow Louise Riggio sold her oceanfront estate for $81 million. Also last month, developer Todd Glaser sold a waterfront home to billionaire inventor Herbert Wertheimer for $38 million. And home improvement star Bob Vila sold a non-waterfront home for $13.4 million.