Paper products heir and real estate investor David Simkins made some more paper on the sale of his waterfront Morningside home.
Simkins, the son of the late Leon Simkins, sold the property at 5725 North Bayshore Drive in Miami to an undisclosed trust for $24.1 million, according to sources. Simkins paid just $16 million for the 3,900-square-foot, four-bedroom home at 5725 North Bayshore Drive. It was built in 1969 on nearly an acre, and includes a treehouse, a music studio, a 140-year-old gazebo, a pool, dock and 125 feet of waterfront.
Compass agent Maurice Boschetti and One Sotheby’s International Realty agent Jackie Diop represented the buyer in the off-market deal. The buyer plans to build his dream home on the property, the agents said. They showed their client, who they declined to identify, a number of properties in Miami Beach and the Venetian Islands.
The asking prices were “extremely high price” per square foot, Diop said. Once they showed him Morningside, they began to reach out to potential sellers, and negotiated with Simkins for months. “He had no intention of selling,” Diop added.
It was a name-your-price situation, she said.
A lack of inventory of waterfront land and homes has pushed a number of buyers’ agents to reach out to potential sellers, brokers say.
The house was previously owned by David Wallack, the owner of South Beach’s Mango’s Tropical Café. Wallack paid $600,000 for the property in 1996.
Wallack’s sale in 2025 marked a new record for Morningside, surpassing Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy’s $14 million purchase of a waterfront home in 2021.
In July of this year, Adonel Concrete’s chairman and CEO Luis Garcia sold his waterfront home in Bay Point for $27.3 million, or a record price per foot of nearly $4,300 per square foot.
Price growth in nearby Bay Point has been even more explosive in recent years. Last year, Fatos Rosenberg sold a waterfront estate in the neighborhood for more than $85 million. The buyer of that home was Daniel Vorcaro, the Brazilian banker tied up in an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud, sources told The Real Deal.
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Mango’s Tropical Café owner David Wallack sells Morningside home for record $16M
