Palm Beach custom home built for former Apple CEO sells for $11.29M
(This story was updated to accurately reflet the most current informaton.)
A Palm Beach house built as a custom home for the former Apple chief who famously clashed with the company’s late co-founder Steve Jobs has been sold by a subsequent homeowner for a recorded $11.29 million.
The seller in the latest deal was restaurateur and real estate investor Andrea “Andy” Travaglia, who sold the two-bedroom house at 127 Reef Road as trustee of a revocable trust in her name. The deed for the North End sale was recorded Jan. 27.
A land trust named after the property’s address was on the buyer’s side of the deal. Palm Beach Gardens attorney Jack B. Owen Jr., who served as the trust’s trustee, declined to comment about the transaction. Because of privacy rules governing trusts, no other information about the buyer’s side of the sale was immediately available in public records.
The Bermuda-style house was built in 2015 and has 4,808 square feet of living space, inside and out, property records show. On a quarter-acre lot, it’s the fourth house west of the beach about a half-mile south of the northern tip of the island.
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The house was built for Diane Sculley and her husband, former Apple CEO John Sculley, who headed the company between 1983 and 1993. A clash with between Sculley and Jobs led to Jobs’ removal as head of the company’s Mac division and later to his departure from the company in 1985. But Jobs eventually returned to lead the company before his death in 2011.
Before Sculley joined the computer company, he was president of Pepsi-Cola, and his career since Apple has involved a number of companies, many with a technology focus.
The Sculleys sold the house in 2018 for a recorded $6 million, and Travaglia bought it in August 2020 for $5.86 million, courthouse records show.
Travaglia, who has previous ties to New York City and Miami Beach, bought the house practically sight unseen during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, she told the Palm Beach Daily News in a November article about the property.
“I hadn’t seen it in person. I was in New York, and my agent showed it to me on a FaceTime call,” she said in November.
She recalled how she saw the house in person for the first time the day the sale closed: “It was perfect for me, and even more beautiful than I had thought.”
Douglas Elliman Real Estate handled both sides of the sale that just closed. Agent Adam McPherson had co-listed that property in August with agent Farhad Farman. Their asking price was $13.75 million, which later dropped to $12.75 million, the multiple listing service shows.
Agent Jack Rooney handled the buyer’s side of the deal. Rooney and McPherson declined to discuss the sale.
Built by Wittmann Building Corp., the house has a living room crowned by a beamed-and-peaked ceiling. That room and the dining area open to a pair of pool-view loggias, one of which has a permanent peaked-awning structure. Each loggia is equipped with automatic wind-break screens.
“The indoors spill out to the outside, so there’s a lot of natural light,” Travaglia said in November.
When the Sculleys sold the house in 2018, the buyer was a trust associated with Leona “Lee” Flynn and her late husband, real estate developer John R. Flynn. In that deal, agent Paula Wittmann — then of the Fite Group, which is today William Raveis South Florida — represented the Sculleys. Agents Toni Hollis and Gloria Moré of Waterfront Properties and Club Communities represented the Flynn family’s trust.
The Flynn trust sold the house to Travaglia’s trust in 2020. In that sale, agent Burt Minkoff of Douglas Elliman acted for the buyer opposite Hollis and Moré.
Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email[email protected], call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Support our journalism. Subscribe today.
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