$17M Wellington estate sold, relisted 6 days later for $29M
WELLINGTON — A real estate investor hopes to turn a luxury Wellington property into a $12 million profit after buying it earlier this month for less than half the price tag.
The expansive estate that has been home to Venezuelan polo team Lechuza Caracas was recently sold for $17 million — less than half the original $39 million price tag on the 62-acre property — and now is back on the market.
According to a deed filed Oct. 13 with Palm Beach County, PBC Polo Properties LLC bought the land at 4370 South Road from PF Polo Properties LLC. The latter corporation is managed by Emma Cisneros, who also manages La Lechuza Caracas LLC, according to Florida business records. PBC Polo Properties is
owned by Palm Beacher Nate Ward, co-founder of private equity investment firm Palm Beach Capital.
The high-end property was relisted on Oct. 19 with the new asking price of $28.9 million.
“Properties in that location have traded at over $1 million an acre,” said Realtor Tom Baldwin with Equestrian Sotheby’s International Realty, who is representing Ward in the sale. He said the financier viewed the polo estate as a solid investment. “This was at a great discount.”
The property features a polo area with a 60-stall barn, two polo fields and a quarter-mile exercise track. A hunter-jumper area includes a 12-stall barn, two feed rooms, four wash rooms, a sand ring, a Grand Prix grass ring and four paddocks.
The new listing describes the property as having owner’s quarters and nine apartments, a manager’s area with conference rooms and a large garage.
Baldwin pointed to the high-goal, world-class polo matches that have been played on the land. “It’s a really special property,” he said.
The Lechuza Caracas polo club is owned by Venezuelan entrepreneur Victor Vargas, owner and president of Banco Occidental de Descuento. Twenty-one of the Lechuza Caracas polo ponies died in 2009 just before that year’s U.S. Open Polo Championship after being injected with a bad batch of nutritional supplement. The owners of the horses later sued the compounding pharmacy for damages related to the deaths.
In April, Vargas sold his longtime Palm Beach oceanfront estate at 60 Blossom Way to a trust linked to former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank H. McCourt Jr. for a recorded $77 million in an off-market deal. The sale ranked as the fourth-highest recorded for a single-seller/ single buyer deal in Palm Beach, according to courthouse records.
Cisneros signed that deed as manager of the Florida limited liability company that sold the Billionaires Row property, White Sea Holdings LLC.
A quarter-mile south of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, the house has 27,000 square feet and stands on a 3.7 acres with about 320 feet of ocean frontage. Vargas paid $68.5 million for it in 2008, property records show.
Another Palm Beach oceanfront estate, at 1960 S. Ocean Blvd., is linked to the Vargas family and has been marketed quietly for months for as much as $75 million through Sotheby’s International Realty agent Cristina Condon. But a search this week showed it no longer appears on her own website or the agency’s. The eight-bedroom house — on 2.25 acres with about 275 feet of waterfront on each side — has 33,069 square feet.
Vargas, the son of a doctor and a lawyer, has a law degree and a master’s degree in finance, according to web sources. His business interests have ranged from banking to oil holdings in several countries.