Florida family that bought fishing cottage for $1M in the 80s is selling it for $295M

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“There is nothing like it, anywhere.” That’s the first line describing a home (if you can call it that) listed for $295 million in Naples, Florida. It’s the most expensive home for sale in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Located in an “exclusive neighborhood” known as Port Royal, the home has its own first and last name: Gordon Pointe. The nine-acre compound holds one primary home and two guest houses; altogether there are 20 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms (and four half bathrooms), a 231-foot yacht basin, a 111-foot floating dock—and, can’t neglect to mention, 1,655 feet of waterfront.

It was smaller when John Donahue first purchased it for $1 million in the 1980s after seeing the strip of land when (according to family stories) he was flying above it. At the time, it was a little more than four acres and had nothing on it apart from a fishing cottage, the Journal reported. The family built it over the next decade or so as they bought more land, and now after Donahue and his wife, Rhodora, passed away, their 13 children are selling.

“We’ve all enjoyed it, but it’s more or less time to move on,” their son, Bill Donahue, who runs the family’s foundation, told the Journal. His parents were high school sweethearts and devout Catholics; his father graduated from West Point in 1946, served in the Air Force, and started an investment management firm that’s now known as Federated Hermes (and run by another son).

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The asking price suggests a new record for most expensive home sold in U.S. history. The current record holder belongs to the billionaire CEO of the massive hedge fund Citadel, Ken Griffin, who bought a penthouse on Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan for almost $240 million back in 2019. Others have come close, but dropped their asking price as time went on—for one, a Los Angeles mansion (deemed Casa Encantada) sitting on more than eight acres of land with seven bedrooms and 20 bathrooms that was originally listed for $250 million last year, but is now asking for $195 million.

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