Too Early, Too High or Both: What Bears Club’s Unsold Listings Tell You

The analysis covers 57 non-closed listing records at The Bears Club main estate tier in BeachesMLS, extracted February 2026. Bears Club Villas and cluster homes (400-series addresses) are excluded. For each listing attempt, we track ask price, price per square foot, days on market, and outcome status. Counterfactual valuations use $1,434/SF, the post-2022 community average excluding the $48M record outlier at 152 Bears Club Drive.

Too Early: The Sellers the Market Wasn't Ready For

The most misread listings in the Bears Club record are not the ones that asked too much. They are the ones that asked a number the market would eventually validate enthusiastically, just years later than the seller expected. These sellers were not wrong about their properties. They were wrong about when the Bears Club buyer would arrive at their price.

The pre-2022 Bears Club market was a fundamentally different instrument from the one that exists now. Estate homes traded at $633/SF on average through 2019. Buyers existed for $7-10 million assets. The $12-20 million Bears Club estate (the product that trades routinely today) simply did not have a deep buyer pool before the post-COVID repricing of South Florida luxury real estate. Sellers who built or held exceptional homes and priced at what they believed their properties were worth discovered that being correct about value and being correct about timing are different disciplines entirely.

209 Bears Club Drive is the most instructive non-sale in the dataset. The property, a 10,490 SF custom estate built in 2009, was listed seven times between January 2014 and July 2019. The asks ranged from $8.345 million to $12.5 million. None produced a close. In 2014, $12.5 million for a Bears Club estate was a number the market had no framework for: the community's estate homes were trading in the $5-8 million range. By 2023, 136 Bears Club Drive (a 2001-vintage home) sold for $19.8 million. The 2014 seller was not irrational. The market simply had not yet repriced to the tier the property occupied.

The pattern is consistent across the pre-2022 non-sellers. Each of these owners built or held a labor-intensive custom property that the Bears Club buyer pool of the time (smaller, less capitalized, oriented toward a different price architecture) could not absorb. The repricing that followed COVID did not create value in these homes. It revealed value that had been there and unrecognized.

The Cost of Capitulating Early

When a seller holds a custom-built estate through years of listing attempts and ultimately sells below ask into a market that had not yet repriced, the loss is not just the discount to ask. It is the entire gain the post-2022 buyer captured in their place. The cards below model three cases using the post-2022 community average of $1,434/SF as the counterfactual reference rate.

Counterfactual values use $1,434/SF, the post-2022 Bears Club estate average excluding the $48M record outlier. Actual realized values for 138 and 161 Bears Club would depend on property condition, specific improvements, and market conditions at time of a hypothetical sale. These figures are illustrative of the repricing magnitude, not predictions.

Too High: Asks the Market Has Never Validated

A different category of non-sale involves asks that were not ahead of the market. They were in excess of what the market has demonstrated any willingness to pay, even in the fully repriced post-2022 environment. The distinction matters: a seller asking $12M in 2017 on a property worth $15M today was right about value and wrong about timing. A seller asking $55M on a property in a community where the all-time transaction record is $48M (achieved by a singular estate on 2.4 acres, built in 2021, with 25,518 total square feet) is operating from a different premise entirely.

The 126 Bears Club case is useful precisely because the property itself is substantial: 16,316 SF, built in 2020, on one of the larger lots in the community. This was not a listing born of delusion about the asset. It was a listing that misread the ceiling of a market that had only just produced its first $20M close and would not produce its only $48M close until 2025. In a community where 13 of 40 total sales have occurred since 2023 and the established estate tier transacts at $1,210-$1,868/SF, an ask of $3,371/SF requires a buyer who believes this single property materially exceeds the community's peak comparable. That buyer has not appeared.

Both: The Speculative Re-List Problem

A third category is more complex than either of the first two. These are properties that transacted at legitimate market prices, then re-entered the market at asks that require the buyer to underwrite a significant appreciation premium on a short hold. The logic is understandable: the Bears Club repriced substantially between 2022 and 2025, and a seller who bought in that window reasonably believes they bought into a rising market. The data suggests the market is more discriminating about this than sellers expect.

The 136 Bears Club situation illustrates what happens when a buyer correctly identifies an appreciating market, transacts at a legitimate price, and then attempts to monetize that appreciation faster than the next buyer is willing to confirm it. The $19.8M sale in March 2023 was well-executed: it was the market's first post-gap transaction, and $1,210/SF was a price that subsequent transactions have validated as the new floor. The $27.5M relist is a different exercise. It requires the market to acknowledge that this specific home, a 2001 build, is worth $2,221/SF, a figure only one property in Bears Club history has ever achieved. That property bore no resemblance to a 2001-vintage estate home.

228 Bears Club Drive presents a genuinely unusual posture in the dataset: a seller who has responded to market non-response by raising the price. Two withdrawn listings at $36.95M and $38.5M, each generating hundreds of days of DOM without a close, have been followed by a third listing at $39M, above both prior asks. The reasoning may be rational from the seller's perspective (the community's overall price architecture has continued to move upward, and 118 Bears Club is now pending at $44M). But the data on what Bears Club buyers have actually paid sets a context: the $/SF ask at 228 Bears Club exceeds every transaction in the community's history.

What's Active Now: Reading the Current Inventory

Nine Bears Club main estate listings are active as of February 2026. The picture that emerges is a market with a wide spread between asks that reflect current validated pricing and asks that represent aspirational theses about where the market is heading. The pending at 118 Bears Club, if it closes at $44M, would meaningfully expand the community's validated ceiling. Until it does, the relevant range remains $1,201-$1,868/SF for the non-record estate tier.

The most significant transaction in progress is 118 Bears Club Drive. At 23,029 SF, it is the largest home in the Bears Club dataset, and at $44M it would be the community's second-highest sale in history. This property has been listed four times since 2019 ($21.9M, $42M twice, now $44M), accumulating over 1,000 DOM across prior attempts. The 29-day path to pending suggests the current pricing aligns with the market in a way the prior attempts did not. If it closes at ask, it establishes a new data point at $1,910/SF for a 2010-vintage home, which would push the non-record ceiling above its current $1,868/SF high-water mark.

At the other end of the inventory, 135 Bears Club Drive is the only active listing priced within the community's validated post-2022 range. At $1,522/SF and $12.9M, it is operating from current comparable evidence rather than aspirational pricing. Twenty-eight days on market reflects fresh inventory. For a buyer seeking Bears Club exposure at current-market pricing, this is the only active listing operating from that premise.

Every other active listing is priced above the non-record ceiling. The 210 Bears Club dual listing at $25.75M asks $3,214-$3,257/SF (above the all-time record $/SF). The 146 Bears Club listing at $26.5M ($2,548/SF on a 2001-vintage estate) was relisted above a prior ask that failed to close. The 232 Bears Club listing at $21.5M ($2,478/SF) has been active for 292 days. The longer-tenured listings (131 Bears Club at 671 DOM, 136 Bears Club at 459 DOM) have not adjusted their prices, and the DOM records reflect the market's response to that posture.