This spring, a cleared, non-waterfront lot on La Gorce Island sold for $10.4 million. No house. No dock. No bay view. Just 0.59 acres behind the island's guard gate, sold to a Coinbase product executive who has not yet broken ground.
That sale, closed April 15, 2026, is the kind of number that makes a portal median look almost beside the point. If you have been comparing La Gorce Island to other Miami Beach islands using list-price averages, you are missing the mechanism that actually explains what is happening on the ground there right now: land itself has become the product, and the price of dirt is being set by what a finished mansion can fetch once it is built, not by what currently sits on the lot.
The Lot That Traded Three Times in Four Years
The parcel at 31 La Gorce Circle has a short but instructive paper trail. Spec developer Todd Michael Glaser bought the site in 2022 for roughly $8.3 million. He cleared it, marketed it as a development opportunity, and tested the market with asking prices that climbed as high as $17.4 million. It ultimately traded this April for $10.4 million to Coinbase vice president David Farmer, according to reporting from The Real Deal and Hoodline.
Read that sequence closely and it tells a story most median-price comparisons never surface. The lot's value moved by millions of dollars across four years without a single structure being built on it. Ask price and sale price landed far apart, which is normal for land deals in this tier but rarely visible unless you are tracking the specific parcel. For a buyer trying to gauge what a piece of La Gorce Island land is actually worth today, the lesson is that the listed ask on a comparable lot is a starting point for negotiation, not a market signal on its own.
Why Builders Pay Record Prices for Dirt
The reason a buyer would pay eight figures for empty ground on La Gorce Island traces back to what finished homes are worth once they are complete. Julian Johnston, an agent with the Corcoran Group, was quoted in The Real Deal's May 2026 coverage of Miami's reheating spec market explaining the logic directly: "Prices for finished homes have gone up so much, it's worth it," he said, citing per-square-foot prices for finished luxury construction ranging from $4,500 to over $6,000.
That is the mechanism. When a completed mansion can sell for $5,000 or $6,000 a square foot, a builder can afford to pay a premium for the land underneath an aging house, tear it down, absorb rising costs for labor and materials, and still land a healthy margin on the finished product. Glaser is the same developer who sold the La Gorce lot to Farmer, and his broader body of work across Miami Beach and Palm Beach follows this exact playbook: buy an underbuilt or dated waterfront parcel, redevelop, sell at a multiple. On La Gorce Island specifically, that pattern has been reinforced by several headline trades over the past two years.
| Transaction | Price | Year | What It Was |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anand Khubani, 2.4-acre waterfront assemblage | $100 million | 2024 | Land assemblage, reportedly for a future home |
| Philippe Harari / AquaBlue Group waterfront mansion | $62.5 million | 2024 | Newly completed spec mansion |
| James and Jennifer Curnin waterfront mansion | $60 million | 2025 | Newly completed mansion |
| Nick Maounis, home next to his existing mansion | $31.5 million | 2026 | Existing home purchase, bringing his cumulative La Gorce spend to $106.5 million |
| David Farmer, 31 La Gorce Circle | $10.4 million | 2026 | Cleared, non-waterfront land |
The spread across that table is the two-tier market in miniature. Finished waterfront construction is trading in the $60 to $62.5 million range. Land, even without water frontage, is trading in the eight figures on its own. And buyers with existing La Gorce holdings, like Maounis, are still adding adjacent parcels rather than waiting for something finished to come to market.
How La Gorce Stacks Up Against Miami Beach's Other Trophy Streets
For most of the past decade, North Bay Road held the city's land pricing crown. In the summer of 2025, a waterfront property there sold for $1,370 per square foot of land, a Miami Beach record at the time, according to The Real Deal's reporting on the deal. That record did not last. Later in 2025, Colombian businessman Jorge Mattos and his wife Patricia sold their waterfront home at 68 La Gorce Circle for $32.7 million, a transaction The Real Deal reported surpassed the North Bay Road figure.
If you are weighing La Gorce Island against North Bay Road, Star Island, or Sunset Islands purely on median list price, you will miss this. The islands that look similar on a spreadsheet of asking prices can carry very different land economics underneath, and right now La Gorce Island is where builders and land buyers are willing to pay the most per square foot for the dirt itself, waterfront or not.
What This Means If You're Touring Listings
If you are actively looking at homes on La Gorce Island, the practical takeaway is to ask a different question than most buyers do. Instead of asking whether a listing is priced fairly for the house, ask whether the price reflects the land, the structure, or some blend of both.
An older home in original condition on a large lot may be priced almost entirely on land value, regardless of how the interior shows. Renovation math rarely pencils out against a full teardown when finished construction is commanding $5,000 or $6,000 a square foot, which means sellers and their agents often set price expectations closer to replacement value than to appraised improvement value. That has real consequences for financing. Appraisers working from recent comparable sales can struggle to support a purchase price when the strongest comps are land-only trades like 31 La Gorce Circle, so buyers financing a purchase should expect more scrutiny and plan for the possibility of a gap between contract price and appraised value.
Before writing an offer on La Gorce Island, a few questions are worth asking directly:
- Is the asking price closer to recent land-only sales or recent finished-home sales on the same street?
- Has the structure been renovated in the last decade, or does its condition suggest the price is really about the lot?
- If financing, has your lender priced in the risk of an appraisal gap on a property that could be valued as a teardown?
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a lower asking price on an older La Gorce Island home mean it's undervalued? Not necessarily. A lower price relative to nearby finished mansions often reflects the fact that the home is being priced as a land play rather than as a livable asset. The land value can still be substantial even when the structure itself needs full replacement.
How can I tell if a listing price reflects land value or finished value? Compare it against recent land-only transactions on the same street, such as the sale of 31 La Gorce Circle, rather than against finished-home sales elsewhere on the island. A price close to recent land comps, adjusted for lot size and water frontage, signals the seller is pricing the dirt, not the house.
The Takeaway
La Gorce Island's median price will not tell you why a cleared, non-waterfront lot changed hands for $10.4 million or why a dated house on a large parcel can still be priced like a finished mansion elsewhere in the county. The number that matters is the gap between land pricing and finished pricing, and right now on La Gorce Island that gap is wide enough to keep spec builders active and long-time owners like Maounis still buying next door.
If you are evaluating a purchase on La Gorce Island, whether it is a finished trophy home, a renovation candidate, or a lot with redevelopment potential, the Julian Johnston Team can walk through the land-versus-improvement math on any specific address before you make an offer. Schedule a Private Consultation to talk through what a given lot or listing is actually priced on.
