PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Palm Beach estate that belonged to the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has sold for $18.5 million to the developer who put the property under contract in November, according to sources familiar with the transaction.
Developer Todd Michael Glaser of Palm Beach and Miami plans to raze the lakeside house at 358 El Brillo Way and replace it with one he will develop on speculation.
A deed hadn’t recorded for the Estate Section sale as of mid-afternoon Friday, nor had the listing in the multiple listing service been updated.
The Corcoran Group had the property listed at $21.995 million.
The Palm Beach Daily News in October broke the news that Glaser had made an undisclosed offer to buy the property.
The 1952 house stands on an acre with 170 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal Waterway, according to the property records and the sales listing.
Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates acted on Glaser’s behalf in the deal, Glaser has said. The listing agent was Kerry Warwick of Corcoran.
Glaser, Moens and Warwick could not be reached immediately on Friday.
While in federal custody, Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in August 2019 in a New York City jail cell after he was charged with conspiracy and sex-trafficking of underage girls.
The house was one of the places where Epstein assaulted underage girls and young women in a multi-year sex-trafficking operation, federal prosecutors said.
Glaser told the Daily News in October that it would be personally satisfying to him to knock down and replace the infamous house. In December, the town approved a request to raze it, but the town prohibits demolitions during the busiest months of the winter tourist season — from the Monday before Thanksgiving to the end of March.
“This is an infamous property. It’s Jeffrey Epstein’s house, and I would support the demolition,” Architectural Commissioner Betsy Shiverick said in December before the board voted unanimously to approve the razing.
The six-bedroom, West Indies-style house and outbuildings have a total of 14,223 square feet, property records show.
West Palm Beach attorney Adam R. Seligman of Ward Damon was involved on the seller’s side of the deal, said a spokeswoman for the firm.
The former Jeffrey Epstein house at 358 El Brillo Way was photographed in 2019.
Since Epstein’s death, The Palm Beach Daily News has reported multiple incidents in which graffiti was painted on the gates that front El Brillo Way. One such incident occurred in July and included the words “Gone But Not Forgiven,” which were later removed.
A similar act occurred some time before Friday morning, when someone chained a framed painting to one of the gates.
The painting, seen in a photograph emailed to the Daily News, bore an image that resembled the U.S. Capitol with an inscription below it that said: “a puppet with power is a puppet of power.”
Someone had removed the painting by mid-morning Friday.
Glaser acknowledged last fall that the property afforded remarkable water views. The house fronts a cove on the Intracoastal and overlooks Tarpon Island and Everglades Island, smaller islands that lie just west of the barrier island that comprises Palm Beach.
Glaser said in October he wanted to build an Art Moderne-style house on the property in the style of Villa Today, a lakefront Estate Section house designed in 1931 on Via Bellaria by noted society architect Maurice Fatio.
The new house likely would measure about 13,000 square feet, Glaser said. Any design would need to win the approval of the Architectural Commission.
The former Epstein house was apparently sold by trustees for his estate. An independent victims’ compensation fund has been established, but it remains unclear exactly how proceeds from the sale of the house will be distributed. Claimants, creditors and others are pursuing money from the estate, according to media reports.
Epstein was initially booked in Palm Beach County in 2006 after police said he had sex with underage girls whom he paid for massage sessions at the Palm Beach house. His 2008 plea deal resulted in his conviction on two state felony counts that included solicitation of a minor.
That plea deal let him avoid harsher federal charges similar to the ones he was facing in New York at the time of his death.
The Palm Beach house was designed by the late architect John L. Volk. The property also includes a swimming pool, a cabana and a separate building used by household staff.
The house was among several homes Epstein owned across the country and in the Caribbean. His historic townhouse in New York just sold after being listed at $88 million through Modlin Group, according to published reports. The buyer in that deal hasn’t yet been identified.
Forbes.com this week reported that just under $51 million from the sale in New York transferred Thursday to the Epstein estate and the victims’ compensation fund, according to estate lawyer Dan Weiner.
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