Jon Bon on the Move...Again
Monday, March 12, 2018
EXCLUSIVE: Jon Bon Jovi pays recorded
$10 million for Palm Beach house
Rocker Jon Bon Jovi has paid a recorded $10 million for an oceanfront house in Palm Beach, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal.
The singer evidently used an ownership company to buy the longtime home of Judith Goldfarb and her late husband, businessman Gene Goldfarb, at 230 N. Ocean Blvd. The deed was recorded Thursday by the Palm Beach County Clerk’s office.
The real estate brokers and other parties directly involved in the deal couldn’t be reached.
Bon Jovi is said to own a home in Boca Raton, as The Hollywood Reporterand other media outlets have reported, and for years, he has regularly been spotted in South Florida, dining at restaurants and attending polo matches, according to news reports. A December 2017 posting on a Facebook fan page shows a photo of the singer posing with fans on Worth Avenue. The same month, he was also photographed dining at Benny’s on the Beach at the Lake Worth beach, as the Palm Beach Post reported.
Bon Jovi, who is married to Dorothea Hurley, also has friends who are seasonal residents of Palm Beach, according to media reports, including radio shock jock Howard Stern and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is also a friend of President Donald Trump. Stern lives about a mile from the property, and Kraft’s residence is even closer.
On Wednesday, Bon Jovi made a return appearance to Billboard’s “Artist 100” list, earning the No. 1 spot. The list “measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption, blending album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.”
Billboard attributed the singer’s “surge back to No. 1 … nearly entirely to sales generated by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer accompanying Bon Jovi’s upcoming U.S. arena tour.”
Ready to renovate, replace?
The five-bedroom, two-story house built in 1985 stands on a property measuring about a third of an acre at the corner of Atlantic Avenue, two blocks south of Wells Road on the near North End.
The house is ripe for renovation, sources said. It’s unclear whether Bon Jovi will renovate it or replace it with a new home.
A New Jersey native, Bon Jovi is lead singer for the band Bon Jovi, which earned $35.5 million last year, according to Forbes.com. Forbes ranked the band No. 80 on its 2017 list of the world’s 100 highest-paid celebrities. In 2016, Forbes estimated Bon Jovi’s personal net worth at $410 million.
He also is a 2018 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The band came to the forefront in the 1980s and has since sold more than 120 million albums worldwide, making them one of the best-selling groups of all time, according to Billboard News. Their hits include Living on a Prayer, Bad Medicine and Wanted Dead or Alive. The band’s latest album is This House Is Not For Sale, which also is the title of its latest tour.
Listed for over a year
Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate acted on behalf of the buyer in the Palm Beach sale.
The house had been on the market for more than a year, according to records in the Palm Beach Board of Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service. Broker Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates had it listed at $10.875 million, down from its original price of just under $14 million.
Moens and Angle couldn’t be reached and their offices declined to comment on their behalf.
The house has 6,803 square feet of living space, inside and out, as well as a two-car garage, a swimming pool and a balcony facing the sea, property records show. The interior features a library/den, a dining room, a fireplace and a wet bar, according to its MLS listing.
The buyer was a Florida limited liability company named after the property’s address with a mailing address in care of Sussman & Associates, a Nashville-based accounting firm specializing in the entertainment industry. Headed by Charles Sussman, the firm handles international business management, royalties and tax planning. Sussman also is the manager of 230 North Ocean LLC, records show.
Sussman and his company are credited on at least two of Bon Jovi’s albums for providing business-management services for the singer.
Ellen Goldfarb, who has a home in Palm Beach, acted as trustee of the trust in her mother’s name that sold the house, the deed shows. She couldn’t be reached.
The Goldfarbs paid $2.2 million for the property in 1991, courthouse records show.
Judith Goldfarb is the widow of Gene Goldfarb, an apparel manufacturer and wholesaler who was chairman of House of Perfection Inc., a company founded by his father in 1934. He “owned and operated manufacturing facilities in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and South Carolina,” according to his obituary in The New York Times.
The Goldfarbs supported a variety of charitable and cultural organizations, including the U.J.A.-Federation, Ben Gurion University, State of Israel, American Jewish Congress, United Way of Palm Beach and Greenwich, Conn. The couple also supported lent support to Good Samaritan and Saint Mary’s hospitals. Gene Goldfarb also was one of the original supporters of the Kravis Center, according to his obituary.
The sale is the latest deal in what has been an active Palm Beach season for properties priced at $10 million or more.
