Hedge fund manager Nick Maounis purchased a neighboring property on La Gorce Island in Miami Beach for $31.5 million, according to a March 20 report by The Real Deal. The transaction involved a 5,400-square-foot house at 84 La Gorce Circle, which was sold by Dennery LLC. The deal closed last Thursday.
The seller’s representative, STRE Management, said in a statement to The Real Deal that the sale was “effectively a land play” and achieved “one of the highest price-per-square-foot figures in Miami-Dade history” for land. The property sold for $1,575 per square foot. Another nearby home at 68 La Gorce Circle previously sold for $1,713 per square foot in August.
The half-acre lot was listed with Jonathan Alfonso of EXP Realty at an asking price of $39 million. Ryan Mendell of Maxwell E Realty represented the buyer. Both Alfonso and Mendell declined to comment on the buyer’s identity.
Maounis and his wife, Susan, had previously bought the adjacent home at 88 La Gorce Circle for $75 million last May with plans to renovate it extensively. That mansion is 21,700 square feet with nine bedrooms and sits on one acre of land. Combined, the two properties now total 1.6 acres and represent an investment of $106.5 million—about $66.6 million per acre.
Maounis is known as the founder of Amaranth Advisors hedge fund, which collapsed in 2006 after losing more than $6 billion on natural gas futures trades. He currently serves as CEO of Verition Fund Management based in Greenwich, Connecticut; Bloomberg reported that Verition managed $14.4 billion at the start of this year.
In addition to their La Gorce Island holdings, Maounis and his wife own a waterfront estate on Pine Tree Drive in Miami Beach purchased for $26 million in 2022 from David and Leila Centner.
The market for luxury waterfront homes remains strong in Miami Beach as wealthy buyers continue relocating from California to Florida. Land sales are also increasing according to brokers cited by The Real Deal.
