La Clara Palm Beach

Finished in 2023, not pre-construction

Great Gulf, the Toronto developer, launched La Clara in late 2018 (The Real Deal, 30 August 2023), secured a $110 million construction loan in February 2021, and completed the 25-storey, 83-residence tower in the summer of 2023. Deeds began recording in June 2023 and the developer’s inventory sold out.

The useful consequence of the building being finished is that it has a real, public transaction record. That is what the rest of this page is.

The address that will not search

A practical warning that cost me an hour and will cost you one too.

La Clara is marketed as 1515 South Flagler Drive. The Palm Beach County Property Appraiser has no such address. I searched for it directly and got nothing. I then pulled every parcel the county indexes on South Flagler Drive — 1,257 of them — and found street numbers 1301, 1333, 1355, 1501, 1527 and 1601, but no 1515. The neighbours at 1501 (Norton Park Place, 1985) and 1527 (Viking Arms, 1981) are both from the 1980s.

The building is in the county record under Arkona Court addresses, in a subdivision the county names “1515 FLAGLER CONDO”, added to the roll in 2024. There are exactly 83 condominium parcels in it, which confirms the residence count precisely.

So if you are checking taxes, assessed values or ownership on a home here, search Arkona Court, not South Flagler Drive. The marketing address is real as a postal matter; it simply is not how the county files the property.

What the county record shows

I read the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s own property page for each of the 83 parcels on 24 September 2026. Before the numbers, what that source is and is not, because it matters:

• Each property page lists the parcel’s whole recorded sales history. The county’s open-data table, which I used for the South Flagler Drive address check, carries only the most recent sale of each parcel and has no area field, so it cannot show a resale, and a later deed recording $10 replaces the real closing in it. The property pages give the same 2026 market values and homestead counts as that table. A closing price on this page is the first recorded sale of $1,000,000 or more on a parcel’s page; no recorded sale falls between $10 and $1,506,745, so a $500,000 floor would pick the same sales.
• Each page also lists a “Total Square Feet” figure, and the appraiser’s footnote says it “may indicate living area in residential properties”. On all 83 pages it equals the page’s “Area Under Air” line. I cite it as the county’s Total Square Feet, so a price per square foot here is county-derived, not a measured interior area.
• There is no qualified/disqualified flag as Miami-Dade and Broward provide, so a recorded price is not confirmed as arm’s-length. The 83 pages list 113 entries: 104 priced sales, every one a warranty deed, and nine that record no price (five warranty deeds and three quitclaims recording $10, and one lease agreement recording $0).

With that stated, here is what the 83 pages hold:

⚠️ The county’s sale dates on the first sales are earlier than the dates in the trade press. The Real Deal reported on 30 August 2023 that deeds began recording in June, and reported the penthouse purchase on 13 November 2023; the county pages date 82 of the 83 first sales 2 or 18 May 2023, the penthouse 18 May 2023. I have not found a source that says what the county’s date records, so I quote it as the county gives it and draw nothing from the gap.

What the county lists for size. On the 17 middle floors (6 to 12 and 14 to 23; there are no 13xx homes) each line has one Total Square Feet figure: line 01 is 3,118, 02 is 1,459, 03 is 2,011 and 04 is 2,992. Floors 4 and 5 have five homes each, floors 24 and 25 two each and floor 26 one. Across all 83 homes the figure takes ten values:

The Real Deal gave rounded areas for a few homes: nearly 3,200 square feet for 2001 (county 3,118) and 3,100 for 2204 (county 2,992) on 17 November 2023, and 8,000 for the penthouse (county 7,833) on 13 November 2023. Those are the publication’s figures; I have not found a source for how they were measured.

Against the trade press. The county’s 83 homes match the 83 units The Real Deal counted, and the prices it reported for individual homes match the county’s closing prices: home 604 at $4.2 million (county $4,223,843), 1601 at $4.7 million ($4,739,768) and 2001 at $4.8 million ($4,775,544) on 30 August 2023, and the penthouse at $18.8 million ($18,769,500) on 13 November 2023; its $1.5 million starting price (17 November 2023) matches the county’s lowest, $1,506,745. The totals differ. The Real Deal reported on 30 August 2023 that La Clara had closed more than $209 million in unit sales and that 15 sales remained to be recorded; its articles of 13 and 17 November 2023, 6 February 2025 and 26 February 2026 repeat “more than $209 million”. The county’s closing prices total $312,454,494. I have not found a source that gives a total for all 83 closings other than the county’s pages, or that says how The Real Deal’s figure relates to them, and I am not going to guess.

On the 2026 assessment roll, the county’s market value for all 83 homes totals $334,957,893, with a median of $3,650,000 and a top value of $16,557,893 (the property pages give the same figures). I am not going to turn that total and the closing prices into a percentage gain, because they measure different things — one is what the homes first sold for, the other is an assessor’s current valuation of every home — and dividing them would produce a figure that looks authoritative and means very little.

One more fact worth having: 51 of the 83 homes carry no homestead exemption — 61% (county property pages, 24 September 2026). That points to a building of second homes and investment holdings rather than primary residences, which shapes both the atmosphere and the resale market.

Most owners have not sold

The most striking thing in the data is not a price. It is that 62 of the 83 homes show no later sale of $1,000,000 or more after their first recorded sale — a sale the county dates in 2023 on 82 of the 83 homes. 21 homes show a second priced sale, dated between 25 August 2023 and 20 May 2026: five in 2023, seven in 2024, four in 2025 and five in 2026. Nine further entries record no price and are not counted as sales (listed below).

A 75% hold rate three years after delivery is high. In a building of this size it means that in the two full calendar years on record, seven homes (2024) and four (2025) recorded a second priced sale out of 83. For a buyer that is a genuine constraint: you are not choosing from a selection, you are waiting for something specific to appear. For an owner considering selling, it means your listing is one of very few and highly visible.

It also means the price evidence, while real, is thin. Four second sales in 2025 and five in 2026 cannot establish a market direction, and I am not going to draw one from them. What the numbers do support is a level: the 83 homes first sold at a median of $3,377,161, the 21 second sales are listed below, and the county assessed the median home at $3.65 million for 2026.

The 21 second priced sales, in date order. Each row gives the home’s first recorded sale and its second, with the change from the first price to the second. Home numbers are the county’s.

The second price is higher than the first on 20 of the 21 homes and lower on one (home 2501: $9,084,719, then $8,000,000 on 29 April 2026). The county pages carry no qualified/disqualified flag, so each is a recorded price, not a confirmed arm’s-length sale. Divided by the same Total Square Feet, the second prices run from $1,443 to $2,934 per square foot, median $2,125. The Real Deal’s article of 17 November 2023 said two homes had resold and described 701 (at $5.5 million) and 2204 (at $8.4 million); the county pages show those two and three more second priced sales dated by 15 November 2023 (2103, 1102 and 1602), and I have not found a source that says why the counts differ.

Nine entries record no price and are not counted as sales. Six follow a priced sale: a quitclaim recording $10 on home 401 (5 April 2024, the grantee shown as an LLC), a warranty deed recording $10 on home 602 (18 December 2025), a quitclaim recording $10 on 702 (7 February 2024), a quitclaim recording $10 on 801 (26 February 2026, after its second priced sale), and warranty deeds recording $10 on 1103 (8 February 2024) and 2303 (28 April 2026), each with the grantee shown as a trust. A seventh, on home 2304, is a lease agreement recording $0 (26 December 2023). Two more, on homes 703 and 1201, are warranty deeds recording $10 that carry the same county sale date, 2 May 2023, as the priced closing. The county pages do not say why any of them was recorded, and I have not found a source that does.

The single most-quoted transaction here is the penthouse, home 2601. The Real Deal reported on 13 November 2023 that a spec developer and his partner had bought it at $18.8 million — the county’s recorded figure is $18,769,500, which matches — and were looking to flip it at $28.5 million. The county page lists 7,833 Total Square Feet, which makes the purchase $2,396 per county square foot; The Real Deal, on an 8,000-square-foot unit, put it at just under $2,350. The county dates that sale 18 May 2023, and its page shows no other sale: the county record shows the purchase; it does not show a resale.

The association’s lawsuit

There is one fact a buyer must know, and it would be a disservice to leave it off this page.

In February 2025, La Clara’s condominium association filed suit against Great Gulf and contractors, alleging construction defects and that the building lacked the luxury finishes buyers had been promised. That was reported by The Real Deal on 6 February 2025. As of 26 February 2026 The Real Deal reported that Great Gulf declined to comment on the suit, citing ongoing litigation; I have found no report of a settlement or ruling.

I am stating the existence of the action and nothing more. I have not reviewed the pleadings, I do not know the developer’s response, and I express no view whatever on the merits — construction-defect claims are common in new Florida condominium buildings, they are frequently resolved, and an allegation is not a finding.

The reason it belongs here is practical rather than editorial. Pending litigation affects a purchase in concrete ways: associations are routinely asked to disclose it, lenders ask about it, it can bear on reserves and special assessments, and it is one of the standard questions on a condominium questionnaire. Any buyer should obtain the association’s current litigation disclosure, the most recent budget and reserve study, and the minutes covering this matter, and read them before committing. If a seller or agent tells you there is nothing to disclose, ask for that in writing.

What to establish before you buy here

• The association’s litigation disclosure, current as of your contract date, together with the budget, the reserve study and relevant minutes — read in full.
• Any special assessments, levied or contemplated, and how any litigation cost is being funded.
• The specific home’s recorded history, searched under Arkona Court, not South Flagler Drive.
• Comparable evidence, home by home. With four to seven second sales a year on the county’s pages (seven in 2024, four in 2025), ask for each of the recent transactions individually rather than a building median. The county’s Total Square Feet gives a per-foot figure for every recorded sale here (median $1,412 at closing, $2,125 on the second sales), but the appraiser says only that it may indicate living area, so ask whoever quotes you a per-foot figure which area it uses.
• Insurance and the structural reserve position, as for any recent Florida high-rise on the water.
• Whether the seller is an original 2023 buyer, which the county record will tell you, and what they paid.

La Clara is a boutique 83-home tower designed by Hariri Pontarini, and most of its owners have not sold since they bought in 2023. It has been finished since 2023 and its association is in litigation with its developer; both facts should be in front of anyone writing an offer.

Thinking about La Clara?

Between four and seven homes a year have recorded a second priced sale here (seven in 2024, four in 2025), and there is an association action a buyer needs to understand before committing. I will pull the recorded history on the specific home, get the association’s disclosure package, and tell you plainly what it changes.

ASK JOSH ABOUT LA CLARA