An oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach is under contract to sell for about $160 million, and the buyers do not plan to live in it. Developer Todd Michael Glaser says he and a partner intend to demolish the existing house and could replace it with two separate homes on the same stretch of sand.
Glaser told The Wall Street Journal that he is one of the buyers in the deal, which has not yet closed. If it does, the sale would rank among the priciest home transactions Palm Beach has ever seen, according to the same report. The property was previously the home of the late developer Murray Goodman and his wife, Joanie Goodman, and was recently marketed for $185 million, as reported by The Real Deal.
A House Worth $160 Million, Built Only to Be Razed
Even at $160 million, the deal would not top the island's current record. Car dealer Michael Cantanucci paid $170 million for an oceanfront Palm Beach estate in 2023, setting the local mark, the outlet notes. Florida's overall home-sale price record belongs to a Naples waterfront transaction that closed for $225 million last year — a sale the Business Observer described as the largest residential transaction in Florida's history.
Notably, that Naples buyer also planned to tear the property down, according to the Naples Daily News. Glaser's plan fits a pattern playing out across Florida's priciest ZIP codes, where buyers are increasingly purchasing nine-figure mansions not to move in, but to clear the lot. The same Real Deal report frames Palm Beach as the epicenter of that trend, pointing to the town's concentration of wealth and a shrinking supply of oceanfront land.
Why Teardowns Keep Happening on the Island
The pattern has precedent. William Lauder bought Rush Limbaugh's former Palm Beach estate for $155 million in 2023, a record at the time, and had the house demolished within four months, per the same report. Elsewhere in Florida, David MacNeil paid $55.5 million for a partially completed mansion in Manalapan, tore it down, and later sold the assembled property for $105 million.
Glaser is no stranger to Palm Beach's high end. He and his partners previously sold a 28,618-square-foot mansion on Tarpon Isle for $152 million, a deal Yahoo News called the highest-priced residential trade in Florida that year and likely in the entire country.
Inventory Is Tight, and Prices Keep Climbing
The teardown appetite is landing in a market where supply is unusually thin. Palm Beach had 63 single-family homes listed for sale recently, down from 75 a year earlier, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. At the same time, demand has surged: the town logged 25 single-family home sales between July and September, a 178% jump from the nine recorded a year earlier, Mansion Global reported. The median sale price over that span climbed 35% to $10.5 million, the outlet added.
Against that backdrop, a $160 million teardown looks less like an outlier and more like the going rate for a scarce resource. Whether the deal for the Goodmans' former estate ultimately closes, and what Glaser and his partner build in its place, remains to be seen.
