ONE Sotheby’s leading ultraluxury sales team – Cindy O’Dare and Richard Boga – are wrapping up a strong first half with more than $125 million in closed sales, including a $17,750,000 deal that reached the finish line this week – and the second half could be even better. In an exhilarating, 65-day burst of activity between April 9 and June 12, O’Dare and Boga signed 13 new luxury listings agreements totaling more than $250 million. They include an ocean-to-river estate offered for $60 million, two $45-million properties, and a $35-million listing on Ocean Drive in Central Beach. Three of the homes are in Indian River Shores, four in Vero Beach, and four in unincorporated sections of Vero’s barrier island. One is on the mainland shore of the lagoon near Wabasso and one in St. Lucie County, about a mile south of the Avalon Beach parking and picnic area. Between them they sit on 64 acres with 3800 linear feet of water frontage. The homes encompass 110,000 square feet of air-conditioned space and include 66 bedrooms and 76 baths. Marble, mahogany and limestone abound, along with resort hotel-style swimming pools, spas with saunas and steam rooms, and endless water views. High-end properties most often sell for less than asking, but even taking that into account, Boga thinks the surge of ultraluxury listings “has Vero Beach poised for its next chapter, with the prices in South Florida continuing to go through the stratosphere, and more and more people down there selling to capitalize on that.” O’Dare and Boga say about 65 percent of their buyers come from South Florida – Jupiter to Miami Beach – and prices along that stretch of coastline have exploded in recent years, with $100-million sales now common and a number of individual residential properties offered for over $200 million. “I think the time has come when people with $20 million to spend or $40 million to spend are going to look at what they can get down there compared to what they can get here and decide to purchase in Vero,” says O’Dare, who is planning a three-day road trip to Palm Beach and points south to market the team’s portfolio to top agents in person. “I started in real estate in Miami, and I still have many friends and former partners who are very successful down there, and of course we will visit Sotheby’s South Florida offices.” The road show is important in part because five of the 13 new properties are pocket listings – including the $60-million house and one of the $45-million properties – which means they won’t appear in Internet searches or be seen in the MLS. By showing up in person with handshakes and hugs, O’Dare can convey her enthusiasm for the properties and give selected agents the details they need to capture the interest of their key buyers and get them thinking about opportunities in Vero. “I will be stopping in Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Boca and Miami neighborhoods like the Grove, Coral Gables and Miami Beach, telling Vero’s story to the agents,” O’Dare says. The partners have put together a slick, 32-page book highlighting their new listings and other elite properties in their portfolio. They include eight homes or lots priced at $12 million or more. The partners say the volume of waterfront luxury property they have to offer matters in two crucial ways. “You can’t get these kinds of buyers to fly into Vero if there are only one or two houses in their price range to look at,” says Boga. “Now it will be much easier to bring buyers in because we have a wide selection to show them.” “It’s also important because no one wants to buy the only $45 million house in town,” adds O’Dare. “If there are number of properties in that price range, buyers are more comfortable making a purchase.” Along with O’Dare and Boga’s listings, there are another dozen or so properties listed for $10 million or more on the market in John’s Island, Windsor and other island neighborhoods – which gives buyers nearly 20 ultraluxury homes to choose from, including five priced at $25 million or more. One of those five, a world-class modernist home in the Estate Section listed with O’Dare and Boga on May 12 is a good example of the price differential between Vero and Palm Beach and Miami that O’Dare will emphasize on her pitch trip. Built before the pandemic by real estate investor and developer Trace McCreary, the residential masterpiece at 2120 South A1A sits on 3.15 elevated oceanfront acres with a wide, accreting beach. It includes 14,900 square feet of air-conditioned space with 10 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms and an array of amenities and luxury features and finishes that run to eight pages in list form. It is offered for $45 million. Scanning realtor.com for similar properties in Palm Beach, the closest one in price is 614 Tarpon Way. Just 8,600 square feet, with six bedrooms and eight baths, it sits on half an acre and is listed for $42.5 million. It isn’t direct oceanfront, but it occupies a prime corner riverfront lot, with water on two sides, and is right across the street from Palm Beach Country Club. Direct oceanfront homes are much higher. An 8,200-square-foot house at 102 Reef Road, which was built in 2014 on a .82-acre lot, is asking $89 million. The 5,600-square-foot house at 1285 N. Ocean – which is less than half the size of the Vero house and sits on one fifth as much land – is listed for $70 million. The most comparable oceanfront listing in terms of house size is 1491 N. Ocean Blvd. Built in 2005, it has 14,496 square feet of living space, eight bedrooms and 10 baths. It comes with a larger, 4.7-acre lot and is listed for $205 million – almost five times as much as the McCreary’s house. The differential is almost as extreme on the Miami waterfront. One example is 1413 N. Venetian Way on Biscayne Bay, which is listed for $50,000,000, five million more than the Vero house, even though it is much smaller, at 10,689 square feet, and sits on just a third of an acre, one tenth as much land as the Estate Section home. Besides a powerful portfolio of new ultraluxury listings, O’Dare and Boga have a long history of record-breaking sales in Vero Beach. They sold the 7-bedroom, 14-bath, 15,900-square-foot house at 1920 A1A in the Estate Section for $27 million in November 2021, which is the highest price ever paid for a home in Indian River County. That $27 million sale, where O’Dare and Boga had both sides of the transaction, was a solid $2 million higher than the previous record, which the same team set in August 2020 when they sold the estate next door at 1940 A1A for $25 million. “There are 23 homes in the Estate Section, and we have had 51 transaction sides in the neighborhood,” O’Dare says. “We have sold many of the homes multiple times.” There has been a total of 22 home sales in 32963 over $10 million since 2012, which is as far back as MLS records go. O’Dare and Boga, or O’Dare and her former partner, Clark French, brought the buyer or seller in 14 of those deals and double-ended seven of them for a total of 21 transaction sides. The partners acknowledge that lifestyles in South Florida and Vero Beach are “apples and oranges,” and that some homebuyers and sellers like the fast pace and glamorous settings found in Miami and Palm Beach. But others are tired of ever-increasing traffic and congestion and are ready for a change. “The buyers we are seeing now are younger than they used to be,” says O’Dare. “They are looking for good schools and low crime. They look at zoning, because they want low density, not the high rises that dominate the oceanfront in South Florida. They are philanthropic and they want to be a part of a community with culture and amenities, and they just can’t believe it when they discover Vero Beach.” <em>Photos by Joshua Kodis</em> [gallery ids="233317,233318"]