Miami manor more than doubles asking price to $48 million
This Florida property is twice the mansion it used to be — at least based on its price point.
A Mediterranean-style, nearly 7,300-square-foot spread in Miami’s historic Coconut Grove neighborhood has more than doubled its asking price after several years on the market.
The five-bedroom, six-bathroom bayfront mansion originally listed for $28 million in 2017 before being taken down and relisted for $25 million that November. That price point was incrementally decreased over the subsequent months before hitting a low of $18.7 million in May 2019, Insider reported. In July 2019, it was again taken off the market, before being relisted this month for $48 million — more than twice its initial ask.
The doubled listing price is in part reflective of a renovation done last year by the owner, Ernst Swietelsky, the retired founder of wholesale flower accessory business Pots Company Importer. The work included updating the kitchen and light fixtures, listing agent Elena Bluntzer of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty told the Wall Street Journal.
The price increase can also be explained by the fact that “the market in South Florida has taken off tremendously” since 2019, with sales in the $5 million and higher range increasing 360% over the course of last year compared to 2019, Bluntzer told the publication.
The reason for the home’s failure to initially sell, she added, was not due to a lack of interest but because Swietelsky was on the fence about selling the three-story manor before his children were out of high school. Now, his youngest is graduating, and he’s finally ready, Bluntzer said.
Swietelsky bought the half-acre property that the home, Villa Positano, stands on for approximately $880,000 in 1997, or some $1.59 million today, the Journal reported. The house features more than 300 feet of waterfront, a new seawall, a pebble-stone swimming pool, a 40-foot boat dock with boat lift, a vaulted carport, an elevator and ceilings ranging from 10 to 30 feet. There are Jerusalem stone and mahogany wood floors throughout and “Caribbean-style twelve-foot-wide terraces on every level” according to a website for the property.
The design of 3080 Munroe Drive is inspired by Swietelsky’s childhood growing up in his family’s rural villa in the Austrian mountainside, just south of Salzburg.
“That experience affected my soul so much that I went on a journey to find comparable land in the tropics,” he said, according to the website.
