Celebrity interior designer Cheryl Eisen, the founder and CEO of Interior Marketing Group (IMG), has sold her Miami mansion for the highest price per square foot in the history of the neighborhood of Palmetto Bay. The 13999 Old Cutler Road property was purchased last May as a showhouse for the South Florida operations of IMG, a household name for the real estate elite for over 15 years that designs and stages the most exclusive properties in New York City, The Hamptons, Palm Beach, and Miami.
The home, which was listed at $4.9 million and ultimately sold for $5 million (fully furnished for $5.3 million), was nearly double what Eisen had bought it for less than a year earlier. While IMG has designed homes for celebrity buyers and sellers including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, actor Daniel Craig, and BravoTV personalities Fredrik Eklund and Bethenny Frankel, this home was designed to be all Eisen’s own, incorporating her life back in NYC into her new tropical paradise.
Inspired by the iconic architecture of the Guggenheim Museum, Eisen reimagined the home, transforming the interiors from traditional Miami Mediterranean into a more modern minimalist style with NYC edge. Other changes include the once-ornate ironclad staircase now replaced with a sleek white sculptural helical Guggenheim-esque staircase, white porcelain tile flooring in place of the previous yellow and orange mosaic marble, and a classic Murano chandelier removed from the foyer with a two-story vertically spoked sleek chandelier now extending down from the 25 ft. domed ceiling.
“I was hoping to enjoy the house as long as possible, so I priced it at what I thought was a completely unattainable number,” said Eisen. “I never imagined that a bidding war would ensue with the property eventually making real estate history.”
“Even in a hot market, the record-breaking price and speed of this sale was well beyond what was expected,” said Darin Tansey of Douglas Elliman, the listing agent for the property. “Cheryl and IMG’s truly unique design and staging is clearly what sets their homes apart.”
Other renovations to the home include the removal of several walls and Corinthian columns to create a more open layout. Eisen also reimagined a previous Baroque-framed fireplace and mantle to a sleek Venetian-plastered monolithic feature-wall, flanked by two 25 ft. floor to ceiling mirrors, a signature of her designs.
The sale marks the second recent high-grossing Florida staging from Eisen and IMG in recent months. In April, a mansion in the highly coveted area of Palm Beach’s Billionaires’ Row sold for $48.5 million, despite its non-waterfront location.
