A quaint, 37-home neighborhood an hour from Miami is attracting moneyed residents, including actor Mark Wahlberg, despite not having a private golf club or coastline—instead its major selling point is privacy and a well-trained security staff of former military and police.
Stone Creek Ranch, located in Delray Beach, Fla., is one of the hottest new neighborhoods for the ultra rich, but it didn’t always start out that way. The development was first created in the early 2000s a stone’s throw away from the marshy land of the Arthur R. Marshal Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
Senada Adžem, the executive director of luxury sales at Douglas Elliman, said before she started selling homes in the development, prices averaged around $6 million.
Adžem broke the mold when she put a house up for sale in the neighborhood for $20 million in 2018. It took her two years to sell it for the first time, but it then sold several times after that. Just last month the same property, now remodeled, sold to Wahlberg for $37 million.
The neighborhood’s privacy and security was part of the reason for that sale, as well as the $43 million sale of two properties to Rockstar Energy Drink founder Russell Weiner, who recently changed his legal name to Russ Savage.
