Former Wal-Mart CEO sells Key home

A beachfront home at 2735 Gulf of Mexico Drive sold Nov. 5 for a year-to-date high on Longboat Key of $5.75 million.

Sarasota County property records list the sellers as H. Lee and Linda Scott. H. Lee Scott was CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. from 2000 to 2009.

The names of the buyers were not immediately available through property records.

The Scotts paid $6,650,200 for the home in April 2010.

Michael Moulton, of Michael Saunders & Co.’s Longboat Key South office, represented the buyers. Roger Pettingell, of Coldwell Banker Previews, represented the seller.

According to a news release, the six-bedroom, 7,550-square-foot home sits on a Gulf-front property with tropical landscaping and fountains and a courtyard with a lily pond. The home features a chef’s kitchen, butler’s pantry, formal dining room, temperature-controlled wine cellar, glass walls overlooking the Gulf, a double-sided fireplace, summer kitchen, rooftop terrace and a home office with custom built-ins.

The home was built in 2008.

“This latest sale further confirms the strong resurgence of the region’s luxury market over the past couple of years,” Moulton said in the news release. “Year-to-date, there have been 44 sales throughout the region involving properties priced above $3 million, compared with 29 such sales through this time last year. Six of this year’s sales — involving three single-family homes and three condominiums — took place on Longboat Key.”

“It seemed like this part of the market took a little more time to develop back,” Pettingell said. “I think we recovered from the bottom up, and it just took time until we got to this level.”

The first week of November was a busy one for Pettingell: On Nov. 7, he represented both the buyer and seller in the $2.2 million sale of a Sanctuary unit. He found the buyer so quickly that he did not have time to complete a photo shoot of the unit.