Built to Withstand 200 MPH Winds: ‘Hurricane-Proof’ Florida New Build Lists for $6.85 Million
The Mallorcan-inspired home stands out with its contemporary style in its golf course community
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A newly built home on a golf course in Boca Raton, Florida, that promises to be hurricane-proof hit the market on Tuesday with a $6.85 million price tag.
The house, which was completed this year, is entirely made up of steel supports and poured concrete and was constructed with insulated concrete forms, which allows the home to withstand winds stronger than 200 miles per hour, said the home’s developer Meir Kroll.
“There’s this picture [of the west coast of Florida after Hurricane Michael in 2018] of all these homes on the beach totally decimated, and then there’s this one house that’s standing. That house was an [insulated concrete form] home,” Kroll said.
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Senada Adzem of Douglas Elliman, who brought the home to market on Tuesday with her colleague Brian Ross, said the potential environmental impact on a property has become increasingly important to her clients.
“They want to know that they’re safe. They want to know that if they’re travelling in the summer, … their home is going to be there when they come back,” she said.
Kroll moved to Boca Raton in 2021 from Los Angeles, where he worked as a luxury developer and built homes for sports agent Rich Paul and MLS player Javier Hernandez. Kroll bought the property to build his first Florida project in 2022 for $840,000, according to public records.
With its contemporary-style white exterior and dark wood accents, the nearly 7,000-square-foot home stands out in the country club community of Boca Grove, where many homes were built in the 1980s and ’90s and sport tiled roofs and a Mediterranean-inspired style.
Instead, working with Spanish architect Jorge Bibiloni Studio, this home draws inspiration from the villas of Mallorca, where Bibiloni is based.
“His design aesthetic is warm contemporary but minimalist,” Kroll said. “There are a lot of spec projects in Florida that are eccentric and over-designed. I think there’s beauty sometimes in subtlety.”
The sleek style with wood accents continues inside the two-storey home, which has five bedrooms, seven full bathrooms and one half-bath. The primary suite has two large walk-in closets and a separate formal sitting room.
Sliding-glass doors on the first level lead out to a covered patio with a full summer kitchen, an outdoor dining area, and a heated pool and spa. A sundeck runs along the length of the second level, overlooking the golf course.
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A record-breaking $11 million sale at The Centennial Collection has set a new benchmark for luxury apartment living in Bondi Junction.
As interest rates, inflation and market sentiment fluctuate, investors are being urged to focus on data, not panic.
Australia’s housing affordability crisis is being fuelled by chronic undersupply, planning delays and rising development costs, as politicians continue to focus on the wrong solutions.
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Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved by first-home buyer incentives or tax changes alone, with leading property figures warning governments must tackle supply constraints if affordability is to improve.
Speaking at the Kanebridge Quarterly Property Leadership Summit in Sydney last week, expert project marketing specialist Sam Elbanna, property investor and fund manager Paul Miron and property consultant Karla McNeice said that a lack of housing supply remained the central issue facing the market.
Elbanna, Director of CPM Realty with more than 30 years’ experience in project sales, argued that successive governments had focused too heavily on stimulating demand rather than addressing the barriers preventing new housing from being delivered.
“The misconception is that politicians think the way to solve the housing crisis is to drive demand,” he said.
“The reality is that’s not the way. This is a supply-side problem, and it needs to be solved on the supply side.”
Drawing on his experience in project sales, Elbanna said policies designed to help first-home buyers often had unintended consequences, pointing to previous grants that ultimately flowed through to higher property prices.
Instead, he said developers were facing increasing red tape, approval delays and rising costs, which were discouraging new housing supply.
“In the absence of stock, demand exceeds supply,” he said.
Miron, a Co-Founder and Fund Manager of Msquared Capital, said the housing debate had become overly focused on tax policy while overlooking broader structural issues.
He argued that affordability challenges stemmed from a combination of factors, including planning constraints, supply shortages, migration levels and interest rates.
“No-one can be 100 per cent certain on the real reason for property prices is going up,” he said.
“The reason why property prices are higher is a combination of interest rates, lack of supply, migration, vacancy rates and maybe taxes play a role.”
Miron was critical of recent federal housing policy changes, warning they could reduce the number of new homes being built and further constrain supply that was even highlighted in the budget.
He also highlighted the importance of the property sector to the broader economy, noting that residential real estate and related industries employed more than one million Australians.
McNeice, who advises developers on sales strategy and market intelligence, said understanding buyers had become increasingly important as affordability pressures intensified.
While affordability remained a major consideration, she said today’s buyers were focused on value rather than simply price.
“People are looking for value for money,” she said.
She said buyers were increasingly evaluating factors such as transport connections, walkability, nearby amenities and flexible living spaces that could accommodate changing family needs.
“What infrastructure is going on? Can I walk to the shops? Can I meet people at the local cafe?” she said.
The panel also discussed the mounting pressures facing developers, with Elbanna arguing that many projects become financially unviable from the moment a site is purchased.
“The viability of a development happens at the moment the site is bought,” he said.
He said rising construction costs, higher interest rates and overly optimistic feasibility assumptions had left some developers exposed as market conditions changed.
While acknowledging the growing number of smaller and first-time developers entering the market, Elbanna said property development required expertise across finance, construction, marketing and legal disciplines.
“It is actually a business that requires a level of expertise,” he said.
Looking ahead, the panel agreed opportunities remained in the market despite current challenges.
Miron said property should continue to be viewed as a long-term investment and cautioned against trying to time short-term market movements.
McNeice said success would increasingly depend on identifying projects that genuinely met changing buyer expectations.
Elbanna said affordable housing remained achievable, but developers needed to deliver more than just homes.
“We can provide affordable housing in this country,” he said.
“But we’ve got to wrap that affordable housing with the things that people want.”
As Australia’s housing affordability debate intensifies, the panellists agreed on one point: without a meaningful increase in housing supply, demand-side measures alone are unlikely to solve the nation’s property challenges.
As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.
A long-standing cultural cruise and a new expedition-style offering will soon operate side by side in French Polynesia.
