Deep in Palm Beach County, out where the suburbs meet the swamp, dirt has turned to gold.
The miracle has unfolded behind the guarded gates of Stone Creek Ranch, a community in an unincorporated part of the county near Delray Beach, where just 37 homes occupy 187 acres. It is about as far inland as one can go before reaching the Everglades.
It is one of dozens of gated communities that have sprung from the earth where sugarcane and bell peppers once grew. With names like Seven Bridges, Stonebridge, and Boca Bridges, these are places where well-heeled buyers can pick up a house for $1 or $2 million.
It wasn’t long ago that Stone Creek was much like its neighbors — nice, but hardly noteworthy.
But the gated community is now a magnet for record-breaking deals and billionaire buyers.
The once-anonymous development has recently had its name in headlines about its new high-profile owners. In October, the multi-hyphenate Mark Wahlberg dropped $32.6 million on a gut-renovated 17,800-square-foot mansion on 2.7 acres. With seven bedrooms, a theater, wine room, gym, sauna, cigar lounge, guest house and pool, it’s a boilerplate home by Stone Creek standards.
His purchase triggered a rush for homes in the neighborhood, according to Talbot Sutter, the broker and owner of Sutter & Nugent.
“Everything in Stone Creek basically went under contract after Mark Wahlberg bought that house,” he said — including one of his listings.
That it has been catapulted to the absolute upper echelons of South Florida’s luxury real estate market puzzles Sutter’s colleagues in more established markets. Palm Beach agents well acquainted with courting the same billionaire crowd wonder why in hell would luxury buyers spend this kind of money in what is, from their view, the boonies.
Yes, there are more centrally located neighborhoods with better access to prestigious clubs, hot restaurants and the ocean, but that is not what Stone Creek’s buyers want. These buyers prioritize safety and privacy above all else, which can deter them from Palm Beach, where anyone can come and go unsurveilled. Stone Creek residents are people who want (and have) high-tech safe rooms with reinforced steel.
The neighborhood’s rise is also closely linked to the South Florida wealth migration catalyzed by the pandemic. Buyers suddenly flooded the market with a flipped set of values and needs: mainly, isolation and the livability of a full-time home rather than a warm weather pied-à-terre.
“Stone Creek Ranch checked every box,” Rockstar Energy founder Russell Weiner said: size, price, privacy and amenities.
“Why in the hell that location, I have no clue.”
Billionaire Weiner, who legally changed his last name to Savage, is a prolific luxury real estate investor. Shortly after Wahlberg’s purchase, he went into contract on two Stone Creek homes, one at 16071 Quiet Vista Circle asking $20.9 million and another at 9303 Hawk Shadow Lane asking $22 million.
These are remarkable prices for non-waterfront homes, but still fall short of the neighborhood’s price record.
In January, a member of the Cafaro family bought a 2.5-acre spec estate for $41.5 million. The Cafaros own their namesake development company, a Niles, Ohio-based firm best known for pioneering the American mall concept. They named their nearly 19,600-square-foot megamansion Casa Maranello for the Italian city where Ferraris are produced. It has a 12-car garage, 12-seat theater, salon facilities, a soccer field, sport court and putting green. Though the sale recorded with the county as $41.5 million, including furniture and other personal items, the total was $55 million, according to listing agent Senada Adžem of Douglas Elliman.
The new buyers are not the first to discover Stone Creek. The Weeknd shopped around the neighborhood, and billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen bought a 31,000-square-foot mansion there in 2021. But as much as this inland compound of megamansions seemed to spring to prominence overnight, its ascendancy was 25 years in the making.
Adžem has been selling homes in Stone Creek since 2018. She remembers when the average sales price hovered in the $6 million range.
“It was not known unless you were local,” she said. “It’s a matter of prestige now to be able to live in Stone Creek Ranch.”
Cane fields and dirt roads
Sutter, a born-and-bred Palm Beach County local whose grandfather was one of the area’s first real estate agents, got licensed straight after graduating from the Benjamin School in 2007. Not long after, he met Ken Endelson, the founder of homebuilder Kenco Communities. Endelson had created the Stone Creek subdivision in 2000, envisioning an exclusive enclave of massive estates. Unlike its neighbors, there would be no golf course, no clubhouse and no communal tennis courts. Just a small concentration of enormous, private homes.
The surrounding land was just “cane fields and peppers. The 441 was still a dirt road,” Sutter said. “Why in the hell that location, I have no clue.”
Sutter was incredulous, but Endelson spoke of a grand future where Stone Creek would be a hub for the global elite. The hitch was that Kenco had hit a rough patch in the financial crisis, and Endelson needed buyers. Some of the planned homes were built and spoken for, but much of Stone Creek was still dirt. In 2009, he sold 19 remaining lots to an affiliate of Axiom Group for $10.1 million, according to property records. In the years that followed, Axiom sold off the lots and buyers filled in the blanks with custom-built megamansions inside the community.
Despite the economic trouble and relative youth of Stone Creek, well-connected buyers emerged. Wayne Huizenga Jr. bought a 5-acre site for $1 million in 2009. He built the mansion and sold it to Office Depot CEO Gerry Smith for $6.7 million in 2017. Huizenga is the son of late billionaire H. Wayne Huizenga, who built Waste Management, Blockbuster Video, Extended Stay America and AutoNation.
Insurance moguls Seth and Brad Cohen of Insurance Care Direct also built homes they eventually sold for $17 million and $19 million, respectively. They bought their sites for $800,000 and $900,000.
Market insiders said these buyers had a snowball effect — big names begot more big names.
The 2020 set found even more to like. They wanted space, security and all their creature comforts under one roof, as well as new construction. Buyers liked that there was no club component to the community, as it meant no club dues, no club politics and no club employees coming and going, agents said.
“Their whole thing is their house is their club house,” Sutter said, describing in-home spas in some houses that “make the Ritz-Carlton look like child’s play.”
“These homes are so big and gnarly with every bell and whistle,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
The Starkification of Stone Creek
There is one man who is responsible for building Stone Creek’s biggest, gnarliest, every-bell-and-whistle homes: Aldo Stark. The founder of Prestige Design Homes, he flipped the mansion to Wahlberg, built the Cafaro family’s Casa Maranello and erected a James Bond-inspired spec estate dubbed Villa Spectre, which he sold for $36.8 million to retired tech CEO Barry Smith last December.
He is known for building massive homes at breakneck speeds, often with a style best described as high drama. The press-shy builder is pictured bearded, in large, dark shades and a pinstriped suit on his website, lending itself to the flash and intrigue he cultivates.
“They were very bold and daring,” Adžem said of Casa Maranello and Villa Spectre. “That is a hallmark of Stark’s vision.”
Adžem is Stark’s go-to agent for his spec homes in Stone Creek, and she helped sell him the lots for those homes. She sees Stark’s arrival in the neighborhood as the moment it blew through its previous price ceiling.
“We were able to offer a new level of product,” she said.
Stark’s homes are fueling the continued interest from Stone Creek’s A-list buyers. Weiner equated the neighborhood to Beverly Park in Los Angeles, a gated community known for large estates, celebrity homes and guarded entrances. It has some peers in Palm Beach County as well. The Bears Club in Jupiter, home to Michael Jordan, is extremely private and secure. Similar to Stone Creek, it has fewer than 55 single-family homes across its 400 acres, although it does have a golf club and a few smaller villas for members. Edward Brown, the former CEO of Patrón Spirits, sold his Bears Club mansion for a record $48 million this year.
The success of these gated enclaves is providing inspiration for a new crop of golf communities shooting up farther north in Hobe Sound, like the Discovery Land Company’s Atlantic Fields. The planned community will have 317 homes on more than 1,500 acres, according to its website. And it will, of course, be gated.
Still, the staying power of such projects has yet to be tested, and so much depends upon the buyers who ultimately commit to spend there. Part of the value of Stone Creek is in its owners, and their own devotion to maintaining property values, said Sutter.
“It’s mansion banking,” he said. “You’re always going to be protected. There is billionaire after billionaire in there who is not going to let their house go under $2,000 a foot.”
For Weiner, it’s a safe investment, but the estates in Stone Creek also provide what money can’t buy in other parts of South Florida.
“Compared to Palm Beach island or Miami Beach, it’s a steal,” he said. “The teardowns in Palm Beach are $200 million and this has more land. It’s gated and armed and no one can drive by; what is that worth?”
—Katherine Kallergis contributed reporting
