After witnessing some $75M in PriceChops, a host of nasty legal skirmishes, and a celebrity-entangled bidding war, Miami's storied Casa Casuarina, the real estate noisemaker famed for being Gianni Versace's "one-time Xanadu of boys in teeny bathing suits," as Curbed Miami has most accurately described it, has finally, finally found a buyer at auction: the investment group VM South Beach LLC—whose principals, the Nakash family, own Jordache Enterprises—emerged victorious in this morning's auction with a bid of $41.5M.
What did $41.5M get for the sum? Old colonial-style bones that almost stoop with the weight of all of Versace's opulent crap, including a gilded, six-person party shower, countless square feet of frescoes, and 24-karat gold mosaics. And, if you're naive enough to believe that the estate's original $125M ask was not just vanity pricing (or a power play in a related lawsuit, but more on that later) the price is a bargain too, considering Casa Casuarina once asked an eye-popping $125M—that is, before it slowly and painfully endured PriceChops until, at $75M, it asked just 60 percent of its initial price.
The owners of Jordache Enterprises have been vying to snatch the property out from the feet of majority owner owner Peter Loftin, a telecom tycoon, for well over a year now, but have been foiled up until this point by Loftin's attempts to sell Casa Casuarina with an "outrageously inflated" listing price. (As New York Times once put it, the sticky legal battle, a tangle of default, debt, and one very pissed-off jeans label, took "some of the shine off this trophy home.") Today's bankruptcy auction was Jordache's big chance to finally own the place for whatever nebulous price point proved to be its "true value." Alas, the chips have fallen as such, and one particularly flamboyant high-end fashion designer will be doing a few turns in his grave tonight now that a mass-market denim label has taken hold of his precious estate.
A refresher on the interiors:
· All Casa Casuarina coverage [Curbed National]
· And The New Owners Of The Versace Mansion Are... The Nakash Family Of Jordache Jeans! [Curbed Miami]
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