An Anna Maria Island Gulf-front estate–because an estate is what it is in this price bracket–has sold for $16 million, making it the highest-priced sale of a single-family residential home ever recorded in Manatee County. It beat out the previous record sale of 6021 Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key, which fetched $13,000,100 in 2020.

This custom-built coastal home at 100 Beach Ave. has 110 feet of beach frontage with sweeping water views. Tanya Burley of Tanya Burley Design designed the home, inside and out, and says it was a pleasure to work on. Of all its details, she especially loves the doors and the kitchen. Built by Whitehead Construction, there are five bedrooms and five-and-a-half bathrooms, with all the fine finishes you might expect, from vaulted ceilings and oak beams to natural stone floors and a fireplace in the family room. Check out the double island kitchen and a spa-style bathroom with heated floors. Beacon Home Design drafted the architectural plans.

An attached one-bedroom guesthouse has a full kitchen and living area. Vanishing sliding doors lead into an oversized patio with a swimming pool and spa. There’s also an elevator and a seven-car garage, in case you pack a different ride for every day of the week.  

We don't know much about the buyer except that they paid for the home in cash and that they “wanted to be on the beach, wanted privacy and wanted it done," says Lisa Rooks Morris of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, who represented the buyer. "They didn't want to have to remodel or add to it, and this home checked all the boxes." 

"This area is still a relative bargain compared to Naples and the East coast," she continues. "You have a lot of demand in this price range and there's almost no inventory. The buyers walked into this one and that was it."

The nearly 7,500-square-foot home was listed for $16.5 million in August of last year and attracted “people with large families who wanted a small island to retire to. Most out-of-state inquiries came from the Midwest and Northeast,” says Charles Buky of Coldwell Banker Realty, who represented the seller. He adds that the seller sold the home “to downsize.”

The seller, Joseph Acebal, is the former co-CEO and co-founder of Ideal Image Development, Inc, a national laser hair removal company. Acebal, along with Rick Mikles, both former chiropractors, founded the Tampa-based company in 2001. Ten years later in 2011, Steiner Leisure, a global provider of spa services and operations, bought the business for $175 million.

This transaction wasn't Acebal’s first purchase and sale in the area. In 2016, he sold 101 Palmetto Ave., also on the Gulf of Mexico, for $3.6 million. The home was built in 2015 as part of a three-home community and was developed by a corporate entity tied to Acebal and Mikles. In 2014, the two also developed and built a 7,568-square-foot home at 3475 Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key and sold it for $7 million in 2016. With such record-breaking sales in a hot real estate market, it's not surprising to hear about this one.