Mexican billionaire German Larrea just paid $6.44 million for a condo in Fisher Island.
Property records show Larrea bought unit 4812 at Bayview at Fisher Island through the entity Antarctica International. The company is led by Luis Castelazo, who runs Larrea’s family’s holding company, Empresarios Industriales S.A. de C.V.
Larrea wealth comes from his family’s mining and rail company, Grupo México, which acquired the Florida East Coast Railway in December for $2.1 billion. Forbes pegs the family’s net worth at about $16.4 billion.
Grazyna Kulczyk, a prominent art collector and one of Poland’s richest women, sold the three-bedroom, 3,550-square-foot unit for about $1,800 per square foot. Records show it last traded for $3.8 million in 2008.
A number of Mexican investors have been turned to South Florida real estate over the past year ahead of the presidential election in July. According to the Miami Association of Realtors, Mexicans purchased $284 million worth of South Florida homes last year, representing about 4 percent of all foreign investment in the region in 2017.
José Antonio Cañedo White, a founding partner at Mexico’s Axis Capital Management recently sold his Oceanside Fisher Island ground-floor suite for $12 million.
Larrea, too, is no stranger to Fisher Island. He was previously under contract to buy two units at Palazzo Del Mare, which eventually led to a legal dispute with developer Heinrich Von Hanau’s Fisher Island Holdings, LLC. Larrea took the company to court to get his 10 percent deposits back after the developer refused to pay for his request to combine the two units.
Also at Bayview, Janet Melk, the ex-wife of Fisher Island developer John Melk, recently paid $10 million for a penthouse suite.
Source: therealdeal.com