Iconic Hacienda del Sol estate on Merritt Island sold for $4.5 million

MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. – One of Brevard County’s most iconic residential properties has been sold for $4.5 million, News 6 partner Florida Today reports.

The property — known as Hacienda del Sol — is located at 205 Hacienda Drive on south Merritt Island. It has been owned since 1988 by Hermansen family, who are prominent in the local business community. The buyer is Le Tian Wang.

The sale price is among the highest ever recorded for a residential property in Brevard.

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Tom Hermansen, a local hotel owner and the son of the late Bjornar and Bjorg Hermansen, said the sale of Hacienda del Sol is bittersweet.

Hermansen said he and other family members have fond memories of the property, including family get-togethers, tennis parties and the dozens of charitable events that have been held there over the years.

But after his father’s death in 2015 and his mother’s death in 2016, the strong connection to the property wasn’t there anymore. His parents had bought the property in 1988, and moved in the following year, after an extensive remodeling. They lived there until their deaths.

“It’s a home made for entertaining,” Tom Hermansen said.

He said some major charitable fundraisers drew hundreds of people to Hacienda del Sol. Also, relatives from Norway often visited for extended periods of time to escape the harsh Scandinavian winters.

Here is what the buyer will get, according to Stephanie Moss Dandridge, a Realtor with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, who represented both sides of the transaction:

• The 17,000-square-foot property features 11 bedrooms and 12½ bathroom on an 7.5-acre site, with a main house, a caretakers’ cottage and a pool house.
• The property has tennis courts, a private dock and boat ramp with more than 550 feet of river frontage, and a 50,000-gallon saltwater pool overlooking a half-acre man-made lake.
• The property has 10 wood-burning fireplaces, commercial walk-in refrigerators, an art studio, a gym, a sauna, a jacuzzi, an elevator and a 1,000-bottle temperature-controlled wine cellar.
• It has imported tile and marble from Portugal, Spain and Italy.

In a statement announcing the sale, Moss Dandridge said: “The amount of international interest in this property is a testament to the Space Coast and the diverse appeal our area offers luxury real estate buyers. This is probably the most notable sale in our history, and to say that I was honored to be its steward doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

Because of the size of the transaction and its legal complexities, Hermansen said he was impressed that the deal with the current buyer closed quickly after a tentative agreement had been reached a little more than a month earlier. He credited the work by legal counsel J. Cole Oliver of Rossway Swann and Charles Ian Nash of Nash & Kromash for helping close the deal.

The estate has a colorful history. It was built by Gulf Coast engineer W.T. Stewart in the late 1930s, and was nicknamed the “White House of the South” because of the number of dignitaries that once enjoyed Stewart’s hospitality.

The estate was modeled off of Southern California’s San Juan de Capistrano mission.

Over the years, it has hosted presidents, royalty and astronauts. More recently, SpaceX founder Elon Musk had the launch party for the Falcon Heavy rocket on the property.

Hacienda del Sol was first put on the market for $8.5 million in December 2014 by Bjornar and Bjorg Hermansen. After their deaths, their family briefly though about keeping the estate in the family, but subsequently decided to sell it.

Tom Hermansen said the property is unique and has high maintenance costs, so only a limited number of people could consider buying it, hence the drop in the asking price in the last few years.

But, with the deal closed, Tom Hermansen says he and other family members are ready to move on, as the property had been unoccupied since his parents’ deaths.

“It’s an awesome place,” Hermansen said. “We hope that it will continue to be a landmark for entertaining and fundraising for years to come. And we are hoping the new family will enjoy it as much as we did.”