A Palm Beach, Florida house, originally built in 1952 was recently renovated under the town’s preservation program for “historically significant” homes and has changed hands in Midtown for a recorded $15.9 million sale.
The Georgian-style house was sold by Sotheby’ International Realty agent Elizabeth “Betsy” Sorrel who has renovated and sold six other Palm Beach homes since 2000.
The property was purchased by a Florida limited liability company named after the property’s address. That entity is managed by Vernon Nicholas Leopard, as state business records show. A man by that name, who goes by “Nick,” founded and is CEO of Accordion Partners, a New York-based financial consulting firm that focuses on the private-equity industry, according to its website.
According to Palm Beach Daily News, Sorrel paid $3.9 million for the house in November 2020, property records show. She then completely overhauled the residence, which was originally designed for James Turner by noted Palm Beach architect Gustav Maass.
“We redid the whole thing. It’s basically a new house reconfigured to be workable and livable for a large family,” Sorrel told the Palm Beach Daily News for a February 2024 article about the property.
In the article last year, Sorrel said the original house “had such great bones, but all the rooms were in the wrong places.”
That meant reworking the floorplan to better suit “today’s modern-living” requirements, she said.
The house has a formal foyer and stair hall with a checkerboard floor of marble tiles. The first-floor layout also includes a family room, a den, the living room and a window-lined “Florida room,” which in turn accesses a covered loggia looking out to the backyard pool. The Florida room, meanwhile, has a built-in bar with a SubZero beverage center.
“It’s like a second family room — you can walk out to the covered loggia and be directly at the pool,” Sorrel said in the article.
