Palm Beach homeowner Amber Ramsay bought the house owned by the late singer at 135A Root Trail, which had an asking price of $5.775 million. A Buffett-family house next door is still for sale.
Fans of Jimmy Buffett fill the Key West streets at parade in his honor
Key West residents and fans of Jimmy Buffett gave the singer-songerwriter a last goodbye with a parade in his honor.
Ariana Triggs, Storyful
Another of the late Jimmy Buffett’s houses has sold on the same historic Palm Beach, Florida street where the “Margaritaville” singer owned three homes as part of compound, of sorts, just down the road from the Atlantic Ocean.
The house at 135A Root Trail sold for $4.795 million in a deal that closed Feb. 21, according to a sales listing updated Feb. 24 in the multiple listing service. The house is the second of the Buffett houses to change hands on Root Trail since the three properties were listed for sale in July, less than a year after the singer’s death at 76 in September 2023.
The house is connected by a brick-paved breezeway to the remaining Buffett-family house, which stands immediately to the west at 135B Root Trail and just saw its asking price reduced from $5.25 million to $4.775 million.
Palm Beach property owner Amber Ramsay bought the house, according to the deed recorded Feb. 26. She co-owns with her siblings a company named Crowder Gulf in Mobile, Alabama, which specializes in offering debris removal and disaster-recovery services, according to the company’s website. She also owns an investment condominium at the landmarked Palm Beach Hotel Condominium on nearby Sunrise Avenue in Palm Beach as well as two investment condos on North Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach, property records show.
With two stories, the house Ramsay just bought on Root Trail has three bedrooms and 3,176 total square feet, property records show. Originally offered for sale at $6.65 million, the property saw a price drop to $5.775 million in November, the MLS shows.
The Palm Beach Daily News is the first media outlet to report the sale.
Although Ramsay never met Buffett, she and the singer — who was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi but grew up in Mobile — shared “the same stomping grounds“ on the Gulf Coast, she told the Palm Beach Daily News. As a teenager, Ramsay recalled, she and others would go sailing and fishing with Buffett’s uncle, a family friend. Buffett immortalized “Uncle Billy” in a song he co-wrote titled “The Pascagoula Run,” released in 1989.
“I just thought of Jimmy as a local hometown guy,” Ramsay said, referring to the singer before his fame skyrocketed.
Ramsay said the fact that her new home in Palm Beach has a connection to Buffett “resonated with me,” although its location near the condo she owns a the Palm Beach Hotel Condominium also was a plus.
Among Palm Beach’s oldest streets, Root Trail runs between the ocean and North County Road, four streets north of The Breakers resort. Once home to an artist’s colony, Root Trail is a narrow street lined with historic buildings, Key West-style cottages and newer homes. It is also within walking distance the North County Road and the Royal Poinciana Way commercial district.
Root Trail, Ramsay said, “reminds me of the laid-back Gulf Coast,” while offering easy access to nearby restaurants, stores and grocery markets.
She added that she had planned to reside at her property at Yacht Club Towers on Flagler Drive but changed her mind after seeing the advantages offered by the former Buffett house.
Laura Semler of Brown Harris Stevens acted on behalf of Ramsay in the sale.
Agent Blake Hanley of Brown Harris Stevens co-listed the three Root Trail properties for sale with his mother, broker Denise Hanley of Denise A. Hanley Inc.
Buffett’s widow, Jane Buffett, signed the deed to sell the house at 135A Root Trail as an authorized member of Sadeca Realty LLC, which the document said is a “dissolved” Florida limited liability company. The deed also was signed by Richard A. Mozenter in the same role. Mozenter is a managing director of Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, a business-management firm that serves high-net worth clients in the entertainment industry, its website shows. The company has offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and other cities.
The first of the three Buffett houses to sell was a two-bedroom landmarked cottage built between 1900 and 1915 at 138 Root Trail, on the opposite side of the street and catty-corner from the one that just changed hands. That cottage and a one-bedroom outbuilding, which Buffett used as a music studio, sold in mid-November for a recorded $6.1 million to a Montreal-based general partnership.
The house Ramsay bought at 135A Root Trail was once part of a two-building apartment complex dating from at least the 1920s. Developers converted the two buildings more than a decade ago into separate single-family houses with a courtyard.
Buffett bought the two houses in separate transactions in 2013 through his longtime real-estate ownership company, Sadeca Realty LLC, courthouse records show.
He paid $1.3 million in May 2013 for the house that just sold, when its interiors had not yet been completed. Buffett and his wife finished the interior, which has hardwood floors, tray ceilings and crown moldings. The layout includes a well-equipped kitchen, dining area and a living room, plus a one-car air-conditioned garage.
The Buffett house next door at 135B has two bedrooms and 2,660 total square feet. That house was originally priced at $6.125 million but has undergone two price reductions. Buffett’s ownership company paid $950,000 for 135B in March 2013.
Blake Hanley declined to comment about the sale.
Buffett died of cancer in New York. In April 2023, about five months before his death, the singer was named a billionaire for the first time by Forbes.com, which recognized not only his musical success but also his business acumen.
His death shocked fans who were devoted to him for his accessible personality, his laid-back lifestyle and his music, including iconic songs like “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Come Monday,” “Fins” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”
In the November sale of the cottage across the street from the house that just sold, Blake Hanley and his mother negotiated opposite agent Jim McCann of Premier Estate Properties.
Although he is often associated with Key West, Buffett and his widow bought and sold other houses in Palm Beach, including a landmarked mansion across town at 540 S. Ocean Blvd., which they sold for more than $18 million about 14 years ago.
Palm Beach’s reputation for privacy and its small-town atmosphere appealed to him, the singer said in 2015, as did Root Trail’s easy access to the beach for surfing and swimming. Although Palm Beach is known for its oceanfront mansions and lakeside estates, there are many smaller homes on the island, including the ones on Root Trail and other parts of the North End.
The singer’s ownership company bought the cottage at 138 Root Trail when the Buffetts still owned the oceanfront mansion.
In 2011, the couple paid just under $5 million for a home on the North End of Palm Beach at 309 Garden Road, which they sold in 2020 for $6.9 million, according to courthouse records. The Garden Road house is about 2½ miles north of the properties on Root Trail.
Denise Hanley previously told the Palm Beach Daily News that Root Trail is a “barefoot-on-the-beach” sort of street. “There’s nothing in Palm Beach really like it,” she said. “It’s a really cool street — so historic, with an Old Palm Beach (vibe),” she said when the three houses were first listed for sale.
Root Trail, she said, is especially a favorite of people who, like herself, have lived in town for a long time. “It’s always drawn the ‘beachiest’ of us,’ ” she said, adding that as a boy, her son always dreamed one day of living there.
Ramsay paid $925,000 for the condo at the Palm Beach Hotel Condominium, 235 Sunrise Ave., in May 2022, property records show. In October 2022, she paid $767,000 for condo unit No. 410 at Yacht Club Towers, 917 N. Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach. She bought a unit on the same floor of that lakeside development in May 2023, paying $350,000 for unit No. 410.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
