A luxury builder has secured a contract for one home as it continues building another in a South Florida waterfront development not far from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Empire Development has a sale pending at 651 Golden Harbour Drive in Boca Raton, according to listing agent Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman. The sale of the six-bedroom, 7,490-square-foot estate listed for $11.95 million is due to close in December.
The builder has another home underway down the street, at 541 Golden Harbour Drive, on the market for $11.99 million. Adzem is also the listing agent for that property, a three-story, nearly 7,900-square-foot home that's expected to be complete by the end of the year, she said.
Empire bought the two lots, tore down existing homes and built the new residences on speculation, meaning without a buyer in place.
The homes are in the Golden Harbour development, 25 miles south of Mar-a-Lago and within walking distance of The Boca Raton, a swanky hotel formerly known as the Boca Raton Resort & Spa.
Golden Harbour overlooks a deep-water canal just off the Intracoastal Waterway. Many of the 111 homes were built 30 or 40 years ago, and wealthy buyers are eager to tear down and rebuild, as Empire did, Adzem said.
Boca Raton prices stable
"In Boca Raton, it's extremely difficult to find a new property on the water," she told Homes.com.
Adzem said the summer was quiet, but she expects activity to increase as winter buyers roll into the area. With Golden Harbour on the west side of the Intracoastal, homeowners aren't dependent on drawbridges to get to the other side of Boca Raton and Interstate 95, she noted.
"A lot of families like the neighborhood for that reason," she said.
While the Miami market is softening, prices in Boca Raton in southern Palm Beach County are more stable, according to Homes.com. At the end of July, Boca's median sale price was $725,000, up 12% from July 2024, the data shows.
The upper end of the housing market appears resilient and buyers of high-end homes typically aren't worried about elevated mortgage rates because they often pay cash, industry observers say.
But the number of new residents moving to Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties is projected to decline markedly this year as the pace of immigration from Latin America slows, according to Lisa McNatt, director of market analytics for Homes.com and CoStar.
"That is going to have implications for both the multifamily market and the residential market in the next year," she said in an email.
Looking ahead, the pace of population growth in South Florida will likely trail recent years, but Palm Beach County is expected to see the fastest pace of growth in the region, McNatt said, citing data from research firm Oxford Economics.
Though the South Florida buyer pool is larger than in many other areas, spec builders should be cautious, given that listings are rising and prices are leveling off across the country, according to Sean Salter, a real estate researcher and finance professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
"There's a decent amount of risk there," he said in an interview. "If it were my money, I wouldn't be doing it."
In a statement to Homes.com, Empire CEO Marc Elkman said he doesn't care for the term "spec homes" because it implies shortcuts and cheap finishes. He said the company builds functional, custom properties that become "generational assets" that outperform most investment classes.
He said he's still bullish on South Florida as a destination, insisting the region will experience a wave of relocations from the Northeast and the West in the next few years.
"Since 2010," he said, "we’ve watched East Boca transform — from the place you visited your grandparents to a vibrant community attracting young, affluent families."
