When Fort Lauderdale residents hear “The White House,” they know it might not mean the place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Here it also means the 1938 luxury estate boaters have been gawking at for generations. However, being a local icon is not all it takes to sell.
After owning the home for three-and-a-half decades, the Hutchings family recently put the house at SE 10th Street on the market. In January, it sold for $24.5m. The buyer was unable to be identified and at the time of this article’s publication, the sale’s records were not yet publicly available.
“I was able to create a good relationship with the seller due to long established and consistent sales performance in Broward’s ultra-luxury market,” says Julie Jones, who sold the landmark with Florida Luxurious Properties colleague Tim Murphy. “We are all only as good as our last result and to me quality and consistency of sales production remains my ultimate goal. It is a huge responsibility and privilege to sell prime luxury properties. It is not a matter of simply selling square footage and waterfrontage; it is more in line with asset management to achieve the highest and best result possible.”
Built in 1938 at the peninsular tip of SE 10th Street, the 11-bedroom Colonial-style home is visible from the 17th Street Causeway bridge, Bahia Mar and Lauderdale Yacht Club. Its stately, column-fronted waterfront side has been a landmark for generations of boaters. It sits on 1.4 acres and offers enough dockage for a couple yachts. The Hutchings family bought it in 1986 for $2m. It went on the market in 2019, originally listed for $32m.
After 35 years of ownership, the Hutchings family wanted things done right when they left it. “It was important to have reputable agents representing us in this sale; we looked no further than our longtime friend Tim Murphy and his associate, Julie Jones,” Barbara Hutchings says who has been friends with Murphy for 30 years. “The private brokerage services provided by Florida Luxurious appealed to me as well, because not only did I want top quality representation; proven results and integrity were also key factors.”
Once Jones and Murphy were given the listing of La Maison Blanche (unlike its Washington, DC counterpart, this White House sometimes goes by its French name), they set about creating a package that sold the home’s history and wow factor. “Launching a luxury offering to market is a critical phase. In a low inventory/high demand market, pricing is highly fluid and the market is prone to change,” Jones says. “At Florida Luxurious Properties, we focus strongly on high quality day and nighttime still photography plus 3-D and lifestyle videos.
“More people than ever are focused on the internet to research and identify their new potential in the SoFlo sunshine so we make it as easy as possible for them to gain an insight into each of our luxury offerings.”
