Hotelier Scions Sell Waterfront La Gorce Home for $20M

The scions of a Miami Beach hotelier family sold their late mother’s La Gorce Island home for $19.5 million to spec home developers.

Records show Stephen and Michael Bernstein sold the house at 12 La Gorce Circle to La Gorce Cir Developments, a Florida entity managed by Miguel Yoma, Guillermo Osses and Francisco Perez. The buyer financed the purchase with a $12.7 million mortgage provided by the sellers. 

Jill Hertzberg and Jill Eber of the Jills Zeder Group at Coldwell Banker Realty had the listing, and Danny Hertzberg, also of the Jills Zeder Group, brought the buyer.

Yoma, Osses and Perez are spec developers who bought a waterfront North Bay Road home in 2021 for $13.6 million and are now gut-renovating it. They sold a waterfront Venetian Islands spec home for $23.5 million last year. 

The Bernstein brothers were acting on behalf of the estate of their late mother, Audrey Levinson Bernstein, who died last year. She was the daughter of hotelier David Levinson. Levinson led his family’s Catskills resort, the Tamarack Lodge, a popular destination in the heyday of New York’s Borscht Belt. David Levinson expanded into Miami Beach’s hospitality market, opening the Algiers Hotel (now demolished) and the Marlin, according to published reports.

Levinson Bernstein and her husband, Jack Bernstein, bought the La Gorce Island home for $500,000 in 1983, records show. Built in 1937 on nearly half an acre, the four bedroom, five bathroom house spans 5,300 square feet. The property includes a pool, a dock and 100 feet of waterfront, the listing shows. 

The brothers listed the house for $25 million in November, Redfin shows. They dropped the asking price to $23 million in April. Danny Hertzberg confirmed the developers plan to build a spec home on the property, and are currently in the design process. 

Hertzberg said La Gorce Island’s security is a draw for buyers: “They want gated, they want guarded.” Security and privacy are increasingly in-demand amenities across the South Florida luxury market. 

Jill Hertzberg pointed to the pending sale at 64 La Gorce Circle, a waterfront mansion listed by Dina Goldentayer for $42.5 million, as an indicator of pricing on the island. Both agents also noted One Sotheby’s International Realty agents Mirce Curkoski and Albert Justo’s $75 million listing for 98 La Gorce Circle.

Other recent sales on the Miami Beach island include liquor distributing heir Mark Chaplin’s May purchase of a non-waterfront home for $8 million. 

In August of last year, spec developer Todd Glaser and his partners Jonathan Fryd and Scott Robins, bought a non-waterfront La Gorce Island teardown for $8.3 million. His website shows the existing home was demolished two months later. Matthew Bires, the co-founder of hit film studio A24, bought a pair of non-waterfront homes for $15.9 million in June of last year. 

Last year, the Jills Zeder Group landed a listing for the late Dr. M. Lee Pearce’s nearly 3-acre compound at 18 La Gorce Circle, with an asking price of $170 million. Redfin shows the three-home estate was delisted in June.