Introducing the new king of Florida flips.
New York financier Scott Shleifer, co-founder of Tiger Global Management’s private equity unit, has been revealed as the mystery buyer who splashed out $122.7 million — cash — to buy an oceanfront spec house in Palm Beach that was once owned by Donald Trump. It’s the most ever paid for a Palm Beach estate, or, for that matter, a home anywhere in the state of Florida.
“He flew in for the day, looked at the house for around 15 minutes, made the all-cash deal and then flew back to New York,” a source who had knowledge of the deal told The Post exclusively.
“He’s just a family guy who is really good at math,” the source added.
Shleifer’s firm, which manages $40 billion, had a stellar year in 2020 — and he’s not alone.
New Jersey-based hedge funder David Tepper also just paid $70 million for a Palm Beach pandemic mansion, according to reports.
“These guys are all the same,” said the source. “For them, it’s just a hedge against the market. They fly down to Miami or Palm Beach and go to a place like Cipriani’s, which they know from New York. They get a table in the back, or just takeout because of COVID. These guys are super conscious of COVID. They don’t want to be by people and they don’t have to be in New York anymore. Nobody has to be here. You just know it. That’s what’s so insane. They can do whatever they want.”
Shleifer’s new digs come with a nine-bedroom mansion and a guest house, which together total 21,000 square feet. The main home is primed for entertaining, with large rooms, a bar, game room, wine cellar and beauty salon. The outdoor space features a pool and outdoor movie theater. Built last year, the 2-acre estate was on the market for a mere month, asking $140 million.
But despite the astounding price point, the property, located at 535 North County Road, cannot shake its controversial history.
The land was once part of a 6.2-acre estate that housed Maison de L’Amitie, or House of Friendship. Ironically, the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the former president, then a businessman, both fought for the estate when it was sold in a bankruptcy auction in 2005. Trump outbid Epstein, paying $41.3 million for the property.
Before that, in the late 1980s, the property was owned by Epstein’s benefactor, retail billionaire Les Wexner, who gifted Epstein his Manhattan mansion used by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to groom and abuse underage girls and to host sleepovers for alleged fellow underage sex abusers, like Prince Andrew.
Wexner paid $10 million for the Palm Beach estate in 1985.
In 2008, Trump offloaded the estate to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev — who made headlines when he bought Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” for $450 million — for $95 million. The deal netted Trump a $54 million profit and became a subject of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Rybolovlev razed the house and sold three adjacent lots for the combined price of $108.2 million, according to reports — less than the carrying cost of the property combined with the costs associated with tearing down the mansion.
Rybolovlev’s spokesman once told this reporter that it was a smart deal because he would make money selling off the subdivisions — but Rybolovlev reportedly never made a penny on it.
In the most recent record-breaking deal, reality TV star and broker Ryan Serhant worked with Douglas Elliman’s Christopher Leavitt to rep the buyer. Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates repped the seller.