One less house for HUD chief
The 6,155-square-foot house features five bedrooms, four and a half baths and three-car garage.
Dr. Ben Carson has just sold hisWest Palm Beach home for $920,000, a big drop fromthe original asking price. He still owns two other homes.
Former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson, now the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, recently sold his West Palm Beach home for $920,000, listing agent Arthur Martens confirmed to the Sun Sentinel.
Although the deed is not yet public, Martens, who represented both ends of the deal, said the transaction closed last Friday. He acknowledged that business executive Stephen Lustgarten and his wife, Barbara, acquired the property. The couple previously owned a home in the same community.
Stephen Lustgarten is president and CEO of Blake Real Estate. He is also executive vice president and a co-founder of Superior Building Services, a company that performs commercial cleaning, construction and heating/air conditioning services.
The home, located at 10942 Egret Point Lane in the Ibis Golf and Country Club community, was originally listed for $1.2 million last December. The asking pricewas reduced to $1.1 million in January.
An inspection of the home revealed the existence of mold arising from a roof leak at the time Carson purchased the residence. Carson and Lustgarten agreed to replace the roof. The repairs did not impact the selling price.
“We had already agreed on a selling price before the discovery of the leak,” Martens, who is with Engels& Volkers, said during a telephone interview Thursday. “Dr. and Mrs. Carson did not hesitate in addressing the problem.”
He said the Carsons were committed to ensuring the house was up to the standard both sides had agreed upon when they entered into the contract.
Carson, a neurosurgeon, was sworn in as the 17th secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in March. With his position keeping him occupied in Washington, and the height of the selling season beginning to slow, it seemed like the right time to sell.
“We didn’t have any urgency [to sell] butwe didn’t want to be carrying a bunch of properties that we weren’t utilizing,” Carson said in a promotional video arranged by the agent.
Eric Braunstein, president of Title of America, worked with the Carsons to close the sale. Through the company’s affiliation with Homes for Heroes – a network that provides assistance to doctors, service members and teachers – the closing fees were waived for the retired doctor.
Carson and his wife, Lacena, upgraded last year to an 8,782-square-foot home in Palm Beach Gardens that they purchased for $4.375 million. The couple also bought a home in Vienna, Va., presumably to be closer to D.C.
The Carsons originally bought the West Palm Beach home in 2013 from John Rooney, who owns the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steel--
ers along with his family. They paid $775,000 for the property.
The 6,155-square-foot house features five bedrooms, four and a half baths and three-car garage.
Coffered ceilings are adorned with handpainted inlays and arched display niches. Columns, marble floors and remotecontrolled window treatments are found throughout the home.
Floor-to-ceiling windows allow plenty of natural light to shine inside, and the master suite has views of both the lake and golf course.
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