A couple with deep ties to Tennessee has sold — for a recorded $36.9 million — the Palm Beach home they bought on the ocean 20 years ago in the near North End.
Jean Bottorff sold the three-bedroom house and its two-bedroom guesthouse at 300 N. Ocean Blvd. via a deed recorded Thursday. Bottorff was joined on the deed by her businessman and banker husband, Dennis C. Bottorff .
The Palm Beach Daily News is the first media outlet to report the transaction.
The Bottorffs paid $6.6 million for the house in May 2004 and later transferred ownership solely to Jean Bottorff, property records show. Together, the buildings on the Mediterranean-style estate have 6,890 square feet of living space, inside and out.
West Palm Beach attorney Paul A. Krasker acted as trustee of the trust that bought the property. Krasker did not immediately return a message left at his office seeking comment about the deal. Because of privacy rules governing trusts, no other information about the 300 North Ocean Trust was immediately available in public records.
Built in 1977, the house stands at the corner of Wells Road on a lot measuring about a quarter of an acre. North Ocean Boulevard separates the main property from its beachfront parcel, which has a cabana facing 132 feet of shoreline.
The house is part of a secluded neighborhood in which North Ocean Boulevard acts as the coastal road, running for just seven blocks between Wells Road and Sunrise Avenue. The house that just changed hands is one of 10 oceanfront homes on that stretch of North Ocean Boulevard.
The house had been “lovingly cared for” since the Bottorffs bought it, according to its sales listing.
The main house has a formal living room, a dining room, a family room, a well-equipped kitchen and two wet bars. A grandly scaled staircase leads to the second floor, where the primary bedroom suite and a guest suite afford views of the ocean. The rear of the house overlooks a pool and gardens.
The guesthouse features a first-floor sitting room and bedroom with another bedroom upstairs.
Brown Harris Stevens handled both sides of the sale. Agent Edward D. Curran acted for the sellers and listed the property Feb. 12 at $37 million. It landed under contract about two weeks later, the multiple listing service shows.
Agent Maureen Woodward represented the buyer’s side of the deal. Woodward and Curran declined to discuss the sale and also declined comment on behalf of their clients.
Jean Bottorff had the house homesteaded as her primary residence in the latest Palm Beach County tax rolls. Property records in Tennessee show the Bottorffs also own a custom home they built on a property they bought in early 2015 in Nashville.
Dennis “Denny” Bottorff is a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and a trustee emeritus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, according to online biographical sketches. He co-founded Council Capital, a Nashville-based private-equity and venture-capital firm. His professional résumé also includes leadership positions in four banks, including his tenure as chairman and CEO of First America Corp. The latter company merged in 1999 with AmSouth Bancorporation in a deal overseen by Bottorff.
He is also a former member of the now-disbanded Palm Beach Underground Utilities Task Force .
The stretch of North Ocean Boulevard where the former Bottorff house stands found itself in the spotlight in 2017 when rocker Jon Bon Jovi and his wife, Dorothea Hurley, paid a recorded $10 million for a property at 230 N. Ocean Blvd. at the corner of Atlantic Avenue, two blocks south of the home that just sold. In 2020, a company linked to Bon Jovi sold, for about $20 million, a custom home he and his wife had built on the lot . They moved a couple of miles north to an oceanfront mansion they bought for $43 million .
The North Ocean Boulevard neighborhood also grabbed headlines over the past few years when some homeowners complained about rowdy beachgoers using a public beach access in the area to trespass on their beach properties .
The MLS shows one other home listed on the same stretch of the coastal road. A Mediterranean-style house at 240 N. Ocean Blvd. has been priced by agent Beth DeWoody of Compass Florida at $39 million in both the single-family-home and land categories of the MLS.
In October, a deed transferred ownership, for $32.66 million , of a larger estate with a landmarked 1920s-era house at 280 N. Ocean Blvd., which lies immediately south of the property that just sold. But the Palm Beach Daily News could not confirm if the private transaction involving No. 280 was a so-called “arm’s length” deal or an internal transfer involving the Weisfisch family. Businessman Rami Yoram Weisfisch was joined on the October deed by his wife, Pnina Apolonia Weisfisch, who today is the minority owner of the 12-bedroom, Mediterranean-style house with 15,323 total square feet. In the October transaction, her husband transferred his 99% ownership stake to Palm Beach Family Holdings Inc. of the British Virgin Islands.
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This is a developing story. Check back for any updates.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com , call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach seaside home brings $36.9 million on North End; it last sold for $6.6M in 2004
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