OLD FLORIDA HOME SELLS FOR $1.46M,
What do luxury single-family home buyers want in Miami? It may be simplicity. An ‘Old Florida’-style home sold for $1.46 million this month. An undisclosed buyer purchased the 1,581-square-foot home at 937 NW North River Dr. The singlefamily residence built in 2013 in the Spring Garden neighborhood on the Miami River has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Gary Feinberg, a Compass real estate adviser, represented the sellers and the home’s architects Jacob and Melissa Brillhart.
The home reinterprets Florida vernacular architecture, combining modernism with traditional tropical design. Except for the two bedrooms, the plan is completely open.
“There’s an appreciation for clean simple lines,” Feinberg said.
The home will become the primary residence for the buyer, Feinberg said. The architectural significance, designed in a Contemporary Tropical Modernism style, was the main reason the buyer bought the home, he said.
“You felt you could be in the jungle in Costa Rica,” Feinberg said. “The experience of indoor, outdoor living does not get better than this.”
The buyer may opt out of flood insurance, Feinberg said, since the singlefamily residence is built nine feet above the ground. “The design takes into account that the river may rise. The Brillharts design for resiliency.”
The American Institute of Architects presented the Brillharts with the AIA Florida Honor Award in 2014 and 2015.
Still, the home sold for below the $1.78 million listing price. “We were seeing where the market was,” Feinberg said when listing the home in September 2019. “If the house would have had a pool or another bedroom, then maybe we would have come closer to the listing price.”
The home sold for $923 price per square foot, more than the most recent comparable sale of the 1,021-square-foot home at 1247 NW Ninth Ave. That threebedroom, two-bathroom single-family residence sold for $544 per square foot, or a total $555,000.
The Brillharts purchased the lot in 2011 for $165,000. They plan to pursue another similar project, Feinberg said.