Ohana estate sold for $11.4 million

After being on the market for more than five years, the Ohana estate on Longboat Key has sold for $11.4 million, according to the Multiple Listing Service. It marks the largest single-family home sale in Manatee County.

Following its construction in 2013, the home at 6633 Gulf of Mexico Drive was originally listed for sale at $22 million and reduced to $19.9 million in 2018, then $15.49 million in February. 

The sale is the largest on the Key this year, with the second-highest sale coming from a home in the Longboat Key Club's Regents Court, which sold in April for $7.5 million. That sale was the highest in five years on the Key. 

Grantor Kathryn Hutcheson sold the property to "Elliott, Robinson & Company, LLP, a Missouri limited liability partnership, as Trustee of the Ohana Hale Estate Land Trust," according to the warranty deed.

Since 2000, only six homes have sold for more than $10 million, all in Sarasota County, according to Barbara Ackerman of The Ackerman Group of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate.

Ackerman declined to comment on details related to the sale of the home, stating the buyer's and seller's wish for anonymity. Ackerman, her son Ryan Ackerman and Realtor Reid Murphy represented the seller, Robert Scott Hutcheson, a Canada-based businessman. The Ackermans and Murphy teamed up to list the property in February.

On Friday evening, The Ackerman Group announced the sale on its Facebook page: “This is a historic moment in Longboat Key’s real estate history and we are proud to be a part of it."

Manatee County’s property appraiser website has Ohana valued at $15,886,151. The website also shows Ohana to span 9,622 square feet on 2.67 acres. The home was designed by Sarasota architect Guy Peterson in a Polynesian style. Ohana means "family" in Hawaiian. 

In 2014, after taking three years to build, the Ohana house received wide praise and media attention for its design and construction team, including Peterson, builder Michael Walker and landscape designer Raymond Jungles.

The property features three pavilions, a tennis court, balconies, terraces, a pool, six bedrooms, seven-and-a-half bathrooms and it is the only Gulf-front property on the Key that has a seawall to protect the home’s beachfront from erosion. Peterson transformed the original structure on the property into a modern guest house. Jungles took care of the pool, which has a tiki hut and a "sunning shelf."

Throughout the estate, windows are prominent (the walls are sometimes made from glass) and offer views of the beach and water, occasionally without any other homes in sight. Details like white oak floors, Douglass fir and mahogany doors, teak cabinets and towering ceilings are meant to give the sprawling compound a sense of cohesiveness. 

Ohana also has two elevators.

The Observer wrote in 2014 that Ohana is "a glimpse into Sarasota’s future, where one-of-a-kind showplace homes are already beginning to lure the world’s super rich to our corner of Florida ... For Sarasotans, Ohana has a special significance. Here is something new. It’s like a page is being turned, from the hermetically sealed Mediterranean mansions of the past to something much more elegant and sophisticated."

This story has been updated to reflect the buyer’s information.