Down the street from former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago, the house at 101 Jungle Road has been on the market for nearly two years.
Darrell HofheinzPalm Beach Daily News
The summer real estate scene in Palm Beach continues to offer surprises when it comes to higher-end real estate deals in the off-season.
After news surfaced at the tail end of July that a buyer was waiting in the wings for a $96 million beachfront listing on the North End, an oceanside property across town on Jungle Road just landed under contract with an asking price of nearly $55 million.
In the Estate Section, the house at 101 Jungle Road has been on the market nearly two years, the multiple listing service shows. The property was the longtime home of the late Democratic political activist Elaine Schuster and her late businessman husband, Gerry. Elaine Schuster died at 90 in August 2022, and her husband died at 89 in 2019.
Their estate measures nearly an acre, including a beach parcel with 200 feet of shorefront on the opposite side of South Ocean Boulevard.
The house was built in 1955 but substantially rebuilt after a 1983 fire. The two-story, five-bedroom residence has Bermuda- and Georgian-influenced architecture. In all, the house and its pool cabana have 13,230 total square feet.
The house is about a mile north of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club.
There's no word yet who is buying the Schuster property, when the sale might close or the amount to change hands.
Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate is representing the Schuster estate in the sale of the property, which first entered the MLS with a price of $62.9 million in September 2022. The price was reduced to $59.95 million at the end of March 2023 and underwent its final reduction in January to $54.9 million.
The estate is being marketed in the MLS’s single-family category but also appears in the land section as a potential tear-down.
The status of Angle’s listing in the MLS was changed July 30 to show a sale was “pending” with contingencies, which typically means the buyer could back out of the deal without paying a financial penalty. The status was changed to “pending” without contingencies Aug. 2.
Angle could not be reached for comment.
Agent Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties confirmed to the Palm Beach Daily News that she is handling the buyer’s side of the upcoming sale. But she would not identify the buyer and declined to discuss the deal.
It’s unclear if the buyer — or buyers — of the house plan to keep it intact.
The house on Jungle Road has been under contract before. About six weeks after it was entered in the MLS two years ago, the status of the listing was changed to “pending.” But that deal evaporated, and the house re-entered the market as an active listing in January 2023.
The floor plan includes a formal dining room and an expansive living room affording ocean views on one side and views of the pool area on the other. An expansive library has custom built-in cabinetry. There also is an exercise room.
The Schusters were prominent Democrats. Among Elaine Schuster’s accomplishments,President Barack Obama appointed her in 2009 to serve as the public delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, where she focused her work on promoting awareness of and combating human trafficking.
Her husband founded and wasCEO of Continental Wingate, a family company that focused on financial services, real estate development, property management and health care companies.
The $96 million listing that went at the end of July was for the beachfront estate at 1446 N. Ocean Blvd. owned by Leonard Riggio, the former CEO of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, and his wife, Louise. With a contemporary-style house built in 1979, that property measures 1.6 acres with 205 feet of direct beachfront. Because the rear of the house faces a federally protected dune-and-beach parcel of about the same size, the estate appears much larger than it actually is.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates holds the listing for the Riggio estate, which landed under contract July 30, less than six weeks after the listing went public in the MLS. The listing had been in the MLS since June 3, records show, but it was not marked “active” until June 20.
Portions of this story appeared previously in the Palm Beach Daily News.
Darrell Hofheinz is aUSA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tipsabout real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz.
