Renovated Midtown house, cottage fetch $4.2M

By Darrell Hofheinz

Daily News Staff Writer

A renovated historic house with a separate cottage has changed hands for about $4.2 million, according to the deed recorded this month in the off-the-market sale of 134 Chilean Ave.

The buyers were William Henry and Hillary Jane Weldon of New Vernon, N.J., according to the deed recorded on Oct. 3. Corcoran Group agent Heather Bretzlaff, who acted for the Weldons, did not have any comment on the deal.

The two buildings — one dating from 1912 and the other from 1920 — were sold by Kranzburg Corp., a company registered in Panama. Agent Beatriz Llaneza of High Rise Properties Real Estate in Wellington wouldn’t comment about her clients, other than to say the family used the property for vacations.

The family paid $1.7 million for the property in May 2011 in a deal that saw Llaneza opposite agent Anne M. Surovek of Brown Harris Stevens, who was acting for the seller, the Ritterbush family.

Llaneza’s clients then undertook their top-to-bottom update, which was designed by architect Harold Smith of Smith and Moore Architects and completed in 2012. Interior designer Veronica Volani-Inza handled the redecoration and won two awards for the project from the Florida chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers.

The transformation of the four-bedroom house and one-bedroom guesthouse was featured this summer in Coastal Living magazine. The renovation included faux finishes and the installation travertine flooring, impact-resistant French doors, and a new kitchen and bathrooms.

Both buildings total about 4,300 square feet. The lot is narrow, measuring less than a fifth of an acre in the middle of Chilean Avenue’s ocean block, a couple of blocks north of Worth Avenue.

New York attorney David C. Camerini signed the deed as treasurer of Kranzburg Corp. Camerini is a partner in the law firm of Fox, Horan & Camerini and specializes in working with Latin American clients, according to the company’s website.

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ZIP-a-dee-doo-dah! — Palm Beachers like to think their 33480 ZIP code puts them on rarified ground when it comes to affluence.

And, by and large, it does.

But on last week’s Forbes list of “America’s Most Expensive ZIP Codes,” the island landed at No. 270. It trailed Boca Raton — in the No. 179 spot — and barely bested Delray Beach, ranked at No. 276.

The reason is that Forbes based the list on specific housing data compiled by Altos Research, a Colorado real-estate analysis firm. Researchers determined the median home prices for more than 28,500 ZIP codes, which Forbes said covered 95 percent of the country’s population.

The data compared median “asking prices for single-family homes and condominiums listed for sale,” according to the article at Forbes.com. The median is the price at which half the properties sold for more and half for less.

Using that criteria, Palm Beach’s home price came in at $1.25 million. Compare that to the ZIP code that took the list’s No. 1 spot — 94027 in Atherton, Calif., a Silicon Valley city with a median price of $9.03 million.

Closer to home, Boca’s 33432 had a median price of $1.46 million; Delray’s 33483 clocked in at $1.24 million.

Palm Beachers pride themselves on having only a single ZIP code — but that distinction works against the town on lists such as this one. Although it’s a relatively small town, the island has a wide range of housing, including its large contingent of lower-priced condominiums on the South End. That tends to dilute its numbers.

Luckily for them, many island residents also have homes in the New York, which was well represented at the top of the list. Hamptons ZIP code 11962 in Sagaponack ranked No. 2 with a median home price of $6.43 million.

And six New York City ZIPs landed in the Top 10, led by SoHo’s 10013 in the No. 3 spot. The median price there was $6.05 million.

The highest-ranked Florida ZIP, by the way, was 33156 near Miami in tony Coral Gables, where the median home price is $3.6 million. It ranked No. 22. Three other Coral Gables ZIPs also earned a spot on the list.

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Inside Amado — A 10-page spread in the November edition of Architectural Digest spotlights the years-long restoration of landmarked Amado, which was designed in the early 1920s for the Munn family by noted society architect Addison Mizner. The issue is devoted to before-and-after renovation projects.

New York designer David Easton carried out the interior decoration at the Medterranean-style oceanfront house on about three acres facing North County Road.

Although the magazine doesn’t identify the homeowner, Toronto businessman William Pencer and the estate made the news in 2007 after lightning set the house ablaze, destroying much of the renovation work that Pencer had already carried out. The work was subsequently redone.

Among the biggest changes to the house was relocating the home’s main entrance to the west side. Easton created a forecourt that allows guests to be “greeted by twin staircases that lead to a terrace and a grand double-height foyer,” according to the article, which is accompanied by more than 20 photos.
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