Brothers’ homes sell for $12.4M

So what does a card-carrying member of the top 1percent do when one lavish, multimillion-dollar beachfront mansion just isnt enough?

Buy two of them.

And thats exactly how Thursdays absolute auction of two Golden Beach palaces went down, with a secret out-of-town bidder beating out his gilded competition with a winning offer of $12.4million a sum brother-homeowners Bobby and Steve Fox will split down the middle.

The name of the buyer, who wasnt present for Thursday mornings auction, is hush-hush for now. It will come out when the homes go to closing next month and the sale becomes a public record.

But this much is known: The buyer is not from the area. And hes got deep pockets.

Its very unpleasant being a seller in this market, said Bobby Fox, who moved to Golden Beachs Ocean Boulevard at roughly the same time as his brother did, in 1990. But I think we both got a good price. The buyer realized the great opportunity and jumped to get the second one.

The way the Foxes went about selling their homes became a national curiosity, garnering media coverage far beyond South Florida. But the way they were sold Ill take two of those! might shock even the freest spenders.

The Foxes tasked auctioneer Lamar Fisher who also serves as Pompano Beachs mayor with getting the maximum for their homes. Fisher thought the best way to go was with a high-bidders choice format. Instead of auctioning the properties off one at a time, he simply opened the bidding on either of them, with the winning bidder allowed to pick which of the two oceanfront homes separated by two city blocks he or she wanted. Then, after the first home was claimed, bidding would commence on the one that remained. But it never got that far, because the winner through his intermediary, a Palm Beach developer had prepaid for the right to take both homes at twice the price, which he then did, leaving the other dozen bidders out of luck.

It was amazing, said unsuccessful bidder Andres Toro, who put away his paddle once the asking price topped $5.5 million. I really dont know what to think.

Auctions are usually reserved for distressed homes such as a Star Island property that went for a whopping $12.7 million earlier this month. But the Fox Brothers, a pair of retired physicians, are current on their payments. They simply wanted out after two years of trying to sell. So they decided to employ Fisher raising plenty of eyebrows in Golden Beach, an exclusive enclave.

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