Billionaire Estée Lauder Heir Strikes Palm Beach Land Deal For $200 Million, Cashing In On The Sizzling Real Estate Market

Everybody has their price, and William Lauder, scion of the cosmetics giant Estée Lauder's founders, has his — $200 million. That’s the number the billionaire former executive chairman of the beauty brand has sold two oceanfront lots in Palm Beach, Florida for, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The deal, which just closed, beat the previous Palm Beach record of around $170 million, set when luxury car dealership owner Michael Cantanucci and his wife, Kimberly Cantanucci, purchased a 1.6-acre oceanfront property with 150 feet of ocean frontage.

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Brokered By Ryan Serhant

Lauder might have been surprised to get his asking number, as he listed the vacant parcels for $200 million in 2023 before lowering them. The sale, brokered by New York-based reality TV star Ryan Serhant, was a tidy piece of business for the tycoon, as he purchased one of the properties—about 1 acre of land—for just under $25.4 million in 2020. He swiftly bought a second—1.8 acres in size—the following year for an undisclosed sum.

Aware of Palm Beach’s soaring property values, Lauder paid $155 million for the late conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s longtime Palm Beach estate shortly after putting the vacant lots on the market.

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Soaring Palm Beach Prices

The sale is the latest blockbuster deal in Palm Beach’s dizzying luxury market. The median single-family home in the exclusive town was $10.9 million in Q4 2024, up a staggering 24.3% over the previous year. The median price in the luxury sector doubled to $34.4 million during the same period. High sales from the uber-wealthy have only drawn more attention to the coveted community. In 2022, Oracle ORCL founder and Chairman Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest men in the world, paid $173 million for a home in the vicinity of nearby Manalapan.

According to Forbes, Lauder, 64, is worth $1.3 billion. He is a member of the family’s third generation and was the CEO from 2004 to 2009. He joined Estée Lauder, in 1986 as regional marketing director of Clinique USA. He created the Origins brand in 1990. He’s a grandson of Estée Lauder, who co-founded the cosmetics firm, and the eldest son of Leonard Lauder, who was CEO and chairman for 17 years.

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Shuffling Trophy Homes

Largely retired from the company’s day-to-day running, Lauder owns multiple trophy homes nationwide. In 2019, he listed a unit at 778 Park Avenue in Manhattan for $45 million, dropped the price to $39 million, and then pulled it off the market. He is also listing another unit in the building for $26.95 million, just above the $25 million he paid in 2023. When closing costs, including brokers’ fees and taxes, are factored in, it will barely register as a profit.

Humble Beginnings

Despite Estée Lauder’s global prominence, the company had humble beginnings. It was started by the matriarch of the family, who named the company after herself — she was born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908, the daughter of the hardware store owner, but changed her name to Estée Lauder after marrying.

Her uncle, John Schotz, was a European chemist who came to live with the family in Corona, Queens, after the break out of the First World War. He specialized in making his own “secret” skin-care products and set up a makeshift laboratory in the tiny stable behind the Mentzer’s house. Today, six billionaire members of the Lauder family own stakes in the publicly traded company, which has 23 brands, including MAC, Origins, and Clinique.

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