Billionaire businessman Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, has splashed out a record-setting $23.75 million for a Palm Beach penthouse apartment at the Leverett House, one of the few condo buildings on the ocean in the hoity-toity south Florida beach town, Dirt reports.
When it hit the market a few months ago, it was touted in the local press as the priciest condo ever listed in Palm Beach. And indeed, the sky-high sale price makes it the most expensive condo ever sold on the pencil thin island that comprises the exceedingly wealthy and notoriously clannish community. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the sale.
Measuring not quite 5,100 square feet, the comfortably appointed minimalist-minded condo was long owned by rags-to-riches oil and gas pioneer Erving Wolf, who passed in 2018, and his wife Joyce Wolf, who passed earlier this year. Noted collectors of American art, the couple acquired the beachfront condo in 2000 for about $6 million and had the place re-worked by their world-famous architect/designer/sculptor daughter-in-law Maya Lin. (Lin’s husband, the Wolfs’ son, Daniel Wolf, also passed recently, in 2021.)
There are four bedrooms and five-and-a-half baths dispersed throughout the light-filled condo that’s imbued with a sedate, organic palette of glossy medium-brown wood floors, taupe grass-cloth wall coverings, and lots of precision-tailored stone and wood accents. Cream-colored floor-to-ceiling curtains draw back to expose floor-to-ceiling windows that frame cinematic views up and down the sugar-sand coastline and over the Atlantic Ocean. A wraparound terrace adds another 1,300 square feet of al fresco living space.
Additional highlights include a long, smooth-paneled entrance gallery, a combination living and dining room that’s comfortable for two people or 20, a relaxed den with terrace access, and a sleek kitchen fitted with white laminate cabinetry, grey-flannel stone counters, and every high-performance stainless-steel appliance any personal chef requires.
Marketing material shows the penthouse transferred with two parking spaces and common charges of just over $7,600 per month. Other high-profile people who own units in the low-rise boutique building include makeup mogul Adrien Arpel, who plunked down $9.4 million for her unit earlier this year.
The record-setting penthouse was listed with Paulette Koch and Dana Koch of The Corcoran Group; Kraft was represented in the transaction by Angle Real Estate principal Christian Angle.
Often cited as a pal of Donald Trump who donated a million bucks to the legally embattled former president’s 2016 inaugural fund, Kraft is no stranger to ultra-posh homes all up and down the East Coast. His current holdings include an oceanfront estate in Palm Beach with not just one but two swimming pools (it’s about 2.5 miles north of his new condo and roughly 5 miles north of Mar-a-Lago, where he is a member), a huge spread in the tony village of Chestnut Hill, Mass., and a waterfront getaway on Cape Cod. Last year he added a $43 million oceanfront home in the Hamptons that happens to be along the same illustrious Southampton street where his new cosmetics tycoon neighbor in Palm Beach sold a $21 million estate back in 2020.
