(Bloomberg) — John Devaney made and lost a fortune trading housing bonds.
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Now, the founder of United Capital Markets Inc. is looking to make his biggest profit ever by selling his home in Key Biscayne, Florida, for $237 million.
He bought the mansion used to film Scarface for $15 million in 2003, and assembled plots for another $15 million long before the area was supercharged with the wealth of billionaires around the world.
The five-bedroom, seven-bathroom and 2.38-acre property with 862 feet of waterfront on Biscayne Bay also has a helipad built for former President Richard Nixon where mega yachts can be moored.
Devaney’s price is perhaps ambitious, but represents the region’s red-hot housing market, which has seen a spectacular influx of property with record purchases over the past year, including the $170 million mansion on Indian Creek Island that Meta Platform Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg bought.
“There’s nothing like this property in all of Miami,” Devaney said in an interview from his living room with his daughter. “There are a lot of billionaires who are concentrated in Indian Creek,” so the neighborhood might lure them. But for people like me who enjoy sailing – and many of these people have large yachts – we have access to the sea and the bay faster than anyone.”
Devane says that when he bought the property it set a record for the area at the time. So when he had to price the house, he wanted to set a record in Miami and possibly exceed the $238 million that Citadel founder Ken Griffin paid when he bought the Manhattan penthouse in 2019.
“It’s one of the most iconic properties in the United States,” he said. “The scale and views of the waterfront are unmatched.” Another thing, he said, the helipad can also be used as a kind of vertiport as electric aircraft will come into operation in the coming years.
Devaney, 55, founded broker-dealer United Capital Markets in 1999 and quickly became the go-to firm for trading in mortgage-backed securities. Devaney raised his profile by supporting industry conventions, frequently sponsoring entertainment, and his yacht “Positive Carry”.
