New homes to be built in central Palm Beach County in gated community by PulteGroup

A rare wooded patch of connected Palm Beach County properties less than five miles from the beach was scooped up this month by one of the nation’s largest developers with plans to build more than 200 townhomes.

PulteGroup paid a total of about $21 million to five private property owners for adjacent lots east of Military Trail and north of Hypoluxo Road. The lots, which total 27 acres combined, sold for between $1 million and $12 million with one seller closing the deal after owning the land for 37 years.

Housing economist Brad Hunter said Pulte’s purchases were notable coups in a county running out of buildable land, especially east of Military Trail.

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“It’s a very strong location, and they will find plenty of demand,” said Hunter, president of Hunter Housing Economics. “Palm Beach County is an extremely desirable address and has just become more so over the past four years as we’ve seen an acceleration of companies bringing high wage jobs to the area.”

The new gated community, which will be called Everton, has already been approved for 210 townhomes, said Brent Baker, division president for PulteGroup in southeast Florida. Baker said Pulte will break ground in early 2024 and is expected to finish the project in the second half of 2025.

The homes will have different layouts but include three bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms. Prices will range from the high $400,000s to low $500,000s. While not bargain-basement prices, they are lower than September's $600,000 median sale price for an existing single family home in Palm Beach County, and Pulte's project follows those of other developers who are building smaller, less expensive housing as interest rates remain high and insurance costs skyrocket.

Minto Communities began offering two home styles under $450,000 earlier this year in Westlake. That's about 7% cheaper than the builder's previous lowest priced model.

“New detached homes are mostly over $800,000 so building townhouses that live like single-family homes allows us to hit lower price points that will appeal to a lot of young professionals,” Baker said. “This will be a great alternative for people who don’t want to move north to afford a new home.”

Sales of newly built single-family homes nationally saw a 34% boost in September compared with September 2022, according to a Commerce Department report released Wednesday. The National Association of Home Builders attributed the increase, in part, to a lack of inventory in the resale market.

In the South, a 17-state region that includes Florida, there was a 30% increase in new home sales in September compared with the same time the previous year. The month-over-month increase was about 14.5%.

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Alicia Huey, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, said in a Wednesday press release that she expects the new home market to cool with mortgage interest rates approaching 8%.

“Higher interest rates not only raise the cost of housing for buyers but for builders as well because of increased costs for financing construction loans,” Huey said.

The largest of the lots Pulte purchased for Everton was nearly 10 acres of woods formerly owned by Bill Winchester, who bought it in 1974 with South Florida pioneer Ernest Klatt. Winchester was married to Klatt's sister. Klatt sold his interest to Winchester in 1993 for "love and affection" and $52,000, according to a deed filed in Palm Beach County Official Records.

Winchester died in April. Pulte bought the nearly 10 acres for $12.1 million.

Everton will keep some of its arboreal appeal with homes designed around two preserves and a lake that will give owners “water and nature views.” Sales for homes will open in the latter part of 2024.

One of the five landowners who sold to Pulte for $1.1 million said the deal was bittersweet. The man, who didn’t want to be identified, bought the land in 1986 for $60,000. He said that Pulte wasn’t the first builder to lobby for his 1-acre property, and that development on the contiguous lots was inevitable.

Although there was a glut of new housing in Palm Beach County leading up to the 2008 housing crash, Hunter said that's all been absorbed.

“Twenty-five years ago, Palm Beach County was building 11,000 homes a year,” he said. “Now, it’s down to maybe 1,500, and that’s because there is very little land left.”

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: New gated townhome community in Palm Beach County to be finished in 2025