Company tied to former Ambassador to Tanzania Michael Retzer Sr. resells Palm Beach house at 130 Cocoanut Row for $16.85 million. The house last changed hands for $16.2 million in 2023.
After owning a 1920s-era house for about a year in Midtown Palm Beach, a company affiliated with Mississippi businessman and former Ambassador to Tanzania Michael Retzer Sr. has sold the six-bedroom property for a recorded $16.85 million.
The house at 130 Cocoanut Row has now changed hands three times since the tail end of 2020.
The Retzer-controlled limited liability company, 130 Cocoanut Row LLC, bought the property in June 2022 for a recorded $16.2 million in an off-market deal. It had previously sold in December 2020 for a recorded $9.285 million.
The deed for the most recent sale was recorded June 17 and lists the Canadian buyer as “Cocoanut Row LP, an Ontario Limited Partnership,” with a mailing address at a house at 122 Forest Hill Road in Toronto.
Featuring a second-floor veranda, the modified Monterey-style house stands on a lot of about a third of an acre. The property is at the corner of Via Sunny, a lake-block street about a third-of-a-mile north of Royal Poinciana Way, the major east-west thoroughfare in Midtown.
The house has 7,106 square feet of living space, inside and out, according to the sales listing. The two-car garage has a second-floor guest apartment..
Retzer’s ownership company has a mailing address in care of the office of Retzer & Retzer in Greenville, Mississippi. Over the years, that company has been affiliated with a number of business ventures, including the ownership of McDonald’s fast-food restaurant franchises in several states.
Retzer served as ambassador to Tanzania from 2005 to 2007 during former President George W. Bush’s administration. Many former U.S. ambassadors have bought and sold homes in Palm Beach over the years, courthouse records show.
Broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate held the listing and had the property priced at $17.95 million. He also represented the buyer’s side of last year’s sale.
Broker Linda Olsson and agent Jennifer Beqaj of Linda R. Olsson Inc. acted for the buyer in the most recent transaction.
Angle and Olsson declined to comment.
The house had been significantly renovated by the sellers who parted with the house in 2021 — Hinda Snyder and husband John G. Snyder, a commercial and multifamily real estate businessman. The residence was then refreshed after it was purchased in 2022 by powerhouse marketing-and-advertising executives Ashlee and Chris Clarke, according to people familiar with that transaction.
The house was built in 1928 and designed by Volk & Maass, the architectural firm of the late partners and noted society architects John L. Volk and Gustav Maass.
Interior features include a formal dining room, a gracefully curved staircase, a center-island kitchen, an expansive gallery hall and a formal living room with a fireplace, according to the sales listing. An enclosed loggia serves as a family room, while the outdoor-entertainment areas include a saltwater pool and an awning- covered patio.
In the 2023 sale, agent Jim McCann of Premier Estate Properties represented the sellers, who bought a house on nearby Clarke Avenue.
When the house sold in 2021, Angle was the listing broker and agent Elizabeth DeWoody of Compass Florida handled the buyer’s side.