British investor Pamela Starret listed the waterfront home for $95 million in 2024.
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THE DEAL : In one of the first major home sales of 2026, a waterfront property in Palm Beach, Fla., has sold for US$72 million (approx $102 million AUD). The buyer wasn’t disclosed. undefined
THE SELLER : Pamela W. Starret, a British investor in the mining and energy industries, had owned the property since 2018, when she bought it for $21.355 million. Starret, who started wintering in Florida in the 1990s, spent about $25 million gut-renovating the house. She listed it for $95 million in 2024. Starret didn’t respond to requests for comment.
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD : On the Intracoastal Waterway on the North End of Palm Beach island, the property is next to a home owned by actor Sylvester Stallone.
THE SPECS : Originally built in 2005, the Neoclassical house measures roughly 16,000 square feet with six bedrooms. The roughly 1-acre property also has a $2 million travertine pool and cabana.
THE MARKET : There were a number of high-priced deals leading up to the New Year in Palm Beach, where the median sale price for luxury homes was $17.2 million in 2025’s third quarter, according to Miller Samuel.
In December, chewing-gum heir William Wrigley Jr., sold a North Palm Beach compound for $97.5 million , while a property a few doors down from Starret’s traded for around $66.1 million, property records show.
“We have had a pretty incredible flurry in the last couple of months,” said Gary Pohrer of Serhant, who had the listing with Ryan Serhant.
Margit Brandt of Premier Estate Properties represented the buyer.
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The US housing market remains under pressure as high mortgage rates continue to weigh on affordability and demand. Industry leaders say 2026 has been one of the toughest years for home sales, with slower price growth, weaker mortgage activity, and fewer buyers entering the market. However, experts say reduced competition and more price cuts could create opportunities for well-prepared buyers.
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The typically busy spring season for the housing market was a dud, and the summer isn’t looking much brighter.
Housing services companies like Zillow Group and Rocket RKT +3.78% were loud and clear last week on earnings calls: Rocket CEO Varun Krishna called the quarter through June “one of the toughest spring housing markets in years.”
Jeremy Hofmann, Zillow’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call that the company predicted earlier this year that the market for mortgages would be flat. “We actually now think it’s going to be down low-to-mid-single digits,” he said.
The rest of 2026 will remain challenging for mortgage origination volume, says KBW analyst Bose George. The question now is what happens in 2027. “If mortgage rates remain [around] 6.75%, I think that’s going to be challenging even for next year,” he says.
But what’s bad news for mortgage companies could be a positive for bargain hunters. Buyers can expect prices to grow more slowly—or mildly decline—with less competition as long as mortgage rates remain unpredictable.
Mortgage rates at the beginning of the year were solidly below year-ago levels, notes Zillow senior economist Kara Ng. But they surpassed last year’s levels recently, she adds, referencing Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of 30-year fixed mortgage rates. Last week’s reading, at 6.69%, was higher than year-ago levels for the first time in 2026.
“From the affordability point of view, it’s going to get more challenging in the second half of the year,” she says. “And when affordability gets more challenging, that impacts sales and home price appreciation.”
Mortgage application data tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association has cooled since the beginning of the year. The trade group expects that the number of mortgage originations in the remaining two quarters will lag behind last year’s levels, after exceeding 2025 levels in the first half.
Rocket’s early-stage data—which the company told Barron’s it derives from its brokerage Redfin, demand for its mortgage products, and signs in its servicing portfolio that a homeowner is preparing to refinance or move—“leads us to expect the third quarter mortgage market to be smaller than the second,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Brown, said on the company’s call. He added that such an occurrence is “something the industry has not seen since 2022.”
Prices will be about flat nationally, Ng says. Zillow’s most recent forecast, which shows how values are expected to change in the year ending June 2027, show them dropping in roughly half of the 100 largest U.S. metros for which data is available.
Buyers aren’t rushing in at a time when mortgage costs are rising and unpredictable. But those with the right combination of patience and cash could stand to benefit. “If you are financially qualified to buy a starter home, you are facing less competition and you’re more likely to get a price cut,” Ng says.
