Real estate scion Douglas Durst and his wife Susanne Durst closed the sale of a 1956 teardown at 1333 North Lake Way in Palm Beach for $14.9 million on May 5, 2026. The buyer is Austin C. Willis, CEO of Coconut Creek-based Willis Lease Finance Corporation, the publicly traded aerospace lessor.

The numbers underneath the headline matter more than the names on either side of the deed.

Land-value math, stripped of improvements

The property is a 0.6-acre lakefront lot on Palm Beach’s North End, with a 1956-built, 2,800-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom house and a pool. The Dursts paid $2.9 million for it in 2015. The May 5 close prints a 5.1x basis multiple over 11 years — a 16.1% compound annual rate on whole-asset price, with no ground-up rebuild during ownership.

What it confirms is the structural floor that mid-block North End lakefront land-value has settled at in 2026. $14.9 million on 0.6 acres is $24.83 million per acre, on a parcel where the improvement is functionally a teardown — neither buyer nor listing materials priced meaningful value into the existing house. Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties had the listing; Todd Peter at Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer.

That per-acre number is the one to file. On the North End, even a non-trophy lakefront parcel without ocean exposure now clears at land values that were associated only with new-construction-finished oceanfront product as recently as 2021.

Where this fits in the May 2026 transaction set

The Durst close lands inside an active stretch for Palm Beach high-end residential closings. Within the prior 90 days, the island and immediate periphery have absorbed:

• A $51.42 million sale on South Ocean Boulevard, 0.54 acres and 8,423 square feet oceanfront (Palm Beach proper, April 2026).
• A $51.7 million Manalapan ocean-to-lake sale closed by Frank and Dolores Mennella on a 1.5-acre 2024 spec build.
• A $50.23 million waterfront close in unincorporated Palm Beach County in May, 1.39 acres and 10,514 square feet.
• The $200 million Esplanade acquisition at 150 Worth Avenue by Reuben Brothers and Crown Onyx in March — the most expensive single-property sale ever recorded in Palm Beach.

The Durst transaction at the lower end of that cluster confirms the spread. Trophy oceanfront has cleared the $50 million tier; mid-block lakefront teardowns are now clearing the high $14 millions. Both prints function as separate floor mechanics on the same underlying land scarcity.

The borrowable basis read

Austin Willis runs Willis Lease Finance Corporation, which closed full-year 2025 at record revenue and operating income. Buyer profile is consistent with the year’s other Palm Beach principal-residence closings: cash-positioned operators of public mid-cap industrials and financials acquiring North End lakefront with an eye toward eventual rebuild.

For Palm Beach owners using residential real estate or estate-collection assets as borrowable collateral, three lines from the Durst sale are worth filing:

• Mid-block lakefront has detached from improvement value. The teardown house contributed effectively zero to the $14.9 million print. LTV underwriting should now treat North End lakefront land independently of structural condition for parcels under one acre.
• The 11-year compound rate is the underwriting baseline. 16.1% per year on whole-asset price is the multi-cycle average — the conservative case, not the optimistic one.
• Public-mid-cap-CEO buyer profile dominates right now. That cohort tends toward held basis and renovation, not flip, and it tightens the local pipeline of mid-block resale supply for the next 24 to 36 months.

Three nine-figure trophy listings remain on the island, including the $205 million former Gucci-heir estate. Mid-block lakefront comparables underneath those listings — exactly where the Durst close prints — are the layer that determines the borrowable basis on the rest of the inventory. The deed is recorded; the comp is on the record.

From the Borro desk: See related national coverage in Joe Lewis’s Sotheby’s London Collection Targets $200 Million in June.

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