From Palm Beach Daily News: Jimmy Buffett’s last remaining house in Palm Beach is poised to sell on Root Trail
When Jimmy Buffett died in September 2023, the “Margaritaville” singer left behind three Palm Beach houses that formed a casual compound, of sorts, on the same historic street near the ocean.
Two of those houses have since been sold, and the last one — at 135B Root Trail — was just put under contract by an as-yet-unidentified buyer who is waiting to close the deal, the Palm Beach Daily News has confirmed. There’s no word yet on how much money will change hands.
The Daily News is the first media outlet to report the so-called “pending” transaction.
With an asking price of $4.775 million, the two-story house has two bedrooms and 2,660 total square feet. It originally was priced at $6.125 million last summer, but that price dropped to $5.25 million before settling at the current asking. Buffett bought the house about 12 years ago for a recorded $950,000, property records show.
All three Buffett homes on Root Trail entered the market in July, less than a year after the singer’s death from cancer at 76 in New York.
With Key West-style architecture, the house that just landed under contract is similar to one next door that sold in February for a recorded $4.795 million. Both houses are connected by a brick-paved covered breezeway that leads to a courtyard. The house under contract is the westernmost of the two buildings.
The side-by-side houses were redeveloped by the same team before Buffett bought them in 2013 through his real estate ownership company, Sadeca LLC. The houses were originally part of a two-building apartment complex dating from at least the 1920s.
All three of the houses on Root Trail were co-listed last summer by agent Blake Hanley of Brown Harris Stevens and his mother, broker Denise Hanley of Denise A. Hanley Inc.
At the house that just went under contract, Buffett had carried out a remodeling project and set up the downstairs area “like a hang-out room with a big-screen TV and a ping-pong table,” Blake Hanley told the Palm Beach Daily News. “It’s a very casual set-up.”
He declined to discuss the buyer or provide specific details about the coming sale. He and his mother also have never confirmed that the houses were linked to the Buffett family, although property and business records show that to be the case.
Buffett’s company paid a recorded $1.3 million for the house next door at 135A Root Trail. That home has three bedrooms and 3,176 total square feet, property records show. Buffett’s widow, Jane, was on the seller’s side when the house sold via a deed recorded in late February to Alabama businesswoman and Palm Beach resident Amber Ramsay. The buyer was represented by agent Laura Semler of Brown Harris Stevens.
The first of the three houses to sell was a two-bedroom landmarked cottage built between 1900 and 1915 at 138 Root Trail, on the opposite side of the street and catty-corner from the house that just went under contract. That property sold in mid-November for a recorded $6.1 million to a Montreal-based general partnership represented by agent Jim McCann of Premier Estate Properties. Jimmy Buffett used the cottage’s one-bedroom outbuilding as a music studio. The singer had paid a recorded $802,000 for the cottage in 2002.
In April 2023, about five months before his death, Buffett was named a billionaire for the first time by Forbes.com, which recognized not only his musical success but also his business acumen.
His death shocked fans who were devoted to him for his accessible personality, his laid-back lifestyle and his music, including iconic songs like “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Come Monday,” “Fins” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”
Among Palm Beach’s oldest streets, Root Trail runs between the ocean and North County Road, four streets north of The Breakers resort. Once home to an artist’s colony, Root Trail is a narrow street lined with historic buildings, Key West-style cottages and newer homes. It is also within walking distance the North County Road and the Royal Poinciana Way commercial district.
Although he is often associated with Key West, Buffett and his widow bought and sold other houses in Palm Beach, including a landmarked mansion across town at 540 S. Ocean Blvd., which they sold for more than $18 million about 14 years ago.