After years of delay, townhomes in Preston Estates, the 7.87-acre, 54-unit Lennar Homes project on 12th Street near Vero’s downtown, will at last be available for rent this summer, according to a spokesperson at ResiHome, a, Atlanta-based property management company that will be marketing Preston Estates for Lennar.
In April 2021, homebuilding giant Lennar purchased the property for $3.1 million from the original developer, Nicholis Rauch-Heine of NHR Homes, who had acquired it for $572,000 in 2016. In 2019 Rauch-Heine announced plans for Preston Estates, a for-sale duplex townhome project. The land was cleared, but, almost immediately after infrastructure work began, the project was beset delays. Rauch-Heine eventually decided just to put the finished site with ready-to-built lots on the market and sold it to Lennar.
Lennar apparently envisioned Preston Estates as a rental community when it made the purchase – soon after the sale, Nicholis Rauch-Heine told Vero Beach 32963 he’d heard the homebuilding giant was considered renting rather than selling the units.
However, shortly after Lennar took over, Covid-19 hit and the construction slowed across the country. Work at the 12th Street site came to a halt and the property continued to languish, with weeds and overgrowing the finished lots and obscuring the central pond the single-street subdivision loops around.
Now the end is in sight. The original plans announced years ago by Nicholis Rauch-Heine remain much the same, with 1,300 or 1,400-square foot units; 1- or 2-bay garage, 2-bedroom, 2-bath; or 2-bedroom, 2.5-bath. No rental prices have been released.
Whatever they end up paying, future residents will be conveniently located within walking distance of shops and dining on 12th Street and U.S. 1 as well as businesses on Old Dixie, and not far from the restaurants, pubs, shops and galleries in Vero’s downtown dining and art gallery district. From the subdivision, it is only a 5-to-10-minute drive to South Beach Park and the Atlantic Ocean, depending on traffic.
At first glance, the well-landscaped entrance, new green and white Preston Estates street sign and orderly row of tidy, pretty town homes circling the small central lake seem to indicate a development ready for residents.
But it is not a warm and welcoming neighborhood just yet – once past the entrance, inside the subdivision pick-up trucks, construction workers and a large Lennar “No Trespassing” sign indicate work is still underway, with finishing touches being put in place.
A small sticker affixed to each home’s front window announces, “This is a Resihome property” and warns “don’t let rental fraud get in the way of your dream home!” The stickers refer potential renters to the rental company’s “secure online portal at Resihome.com.”
Rent fraud is on the rise in Florida, according to multiple sources, including floridapropertymanagement.com, floridarealtors.org, and other industry websites and publications.
Buzz MacWilliam, broker/owner of AMAC Alex MacWilliam Real Estate, agrees, noting that the problem of rental fraud does exists in Vero Beach, often in short term rentals.
“People can post anything online,” he says – including solicitations offering to rent a vacant property that doesn’t belong to the person offering the rental. “You have to verify the information, meet face-to-face, do a credit check, see the property,” says MacWilliam.
As for Preston Estates, the ResiHome spokesperson says would-be renters should check back on Resihome.com later this month to see if applications are open.