Introducing the new King of Florida.
New York financier Scott Shleifer, co-founder of Tiger Global Management’s private equity unit, has been revealed as the mystery buyer who plundered $ 122.7 million in cash to buy a seafront specification house in Palm Beach that was once owned by Donald Trump is owned. This is the most ever paid for a Palm Beach estate, or, for that matter, a home anywhere in the state of Florida.
“He flew in that day, looked at the house for about 15 minutes, made the cash and then flew back to New York,” a source who knew the deal told The Post exclusively.
“He’s just a family man who’s really good at math,” the source said.
Shleifer’s $ 40 billion firm has had a stellar year in 2020 – and he’s not alone.
According to reports, hedge funder David Tepper, who is based in New Jersey, also paid only $ 70 million for a Palm Beach pandemic home.
“These guys are all the same,” the source said. “For them, it’s just a fence against the market. They fly down to Miami or Palm Beach and go to a place like Cipriani’s, which they know from New York. They get a table at the back, or just take away because of COVID. These guys are very aware of COVID. They do not want to be through people and no longer need to be in New York. No one needs to be here. You just know it. This is what is so insane. They can do whatever they want. ‘
Shleifer’s new excavations include a nine-bedroom mansion and a 21,000-square-foot guest house. The main house is ideal for entertaining, with large rooms, a bar, games room, wine cellar and beauty salon. The outdoor room has an outdoor pool and movie theater. The 2-acre estate, built last year, was on the market for only a month and raised $ 140 million.
But despite the staggering price point, the property, located at 535 North County Road, cannot shake its controversial history.
The land was once part of a 6.2-hectare estate that housed Maison de L’Amitie, or House of Friendship. Ironically, the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the former president, then a businessman, both fought for the estate when it was sold at a bankruptcy auction in 2005. Trump surpassed Epstein and paid $ 41.3 million for the property.
Previously, in the late 1980s, the property was owned by Epstein’s benefactor, small billionaire Les Wexner, who donated Epstein to his Manhattan mansion used by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to care for and abuse underage girls and to sleep over for alleged to present fellow minor sex abusers, such as Prince Andrew.
Wexner paid $ 10 million for the Palm Beach estate in 1985.
In 2008, Trump handed over the estate to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev – who made headlines when he bought Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” for $ 450 million – for $ 95 million. The deal gave Trump a $ 54 million profit and a topic of Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation.
According to reports, Rybolovlev destroyed the house and sold three adjoining plots for the combined price of $ 108.2 million, less the cost of carrying the property, along with the cost of demolishing the mansion.
Rybolovlev’s spokesman once told this reporter that it was a smart deal because he would earn money to sell the subdivisions – but Rybolovlev apparently never earned a penny from it.
In the most recent record, Reality TV star and broker Ryan Serhant worked with Douglas Elliman’s Christopher Leavitt to give the buyer. Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates owns the seller.