Basketballer Shaquille O’Neal has listed eight-bedroom, nearly 20,000-square-foot mansion on Miami’s Star Island for $35 million—fully $3 million more than he had listed it for in 2005.
Shaq, who plays for the Miami Heat, bought the mansion at 26 Star Island Drive through his Chexy Trust in 2004 for $18.8 million, according to public records. After he listed the Star Island mansion in 2005, Shaq was reported to have been eyeing a Rio Vista Isles, Fla. mansion that had been listed for $22.5 million but that was not on the market when Shaq was considering it. That deal never happened, and Shaq later pulled the Star Island mansion off the market. It’s unclear where he would go if he were to sell the Star Island spread.
Retired Miami Heat center Rony Seikaly built the mansion in 1992 and sold it in 1997 to Pelham Properties, which is controlled by South American soda magnate Juan Carlos Correa. Correa then sold the 19,440-square-foot mansion, which sits on 2.5 acres, to Shaq in 2004. Features in the mansion and on the property, which is on the waterfront of Biscayne Bay, include an indoor basketball court, a gym, a steam room, a sauna, a two-bedroom guest house, an outdoor Jacuzzi, a swimming pool, a tennis court and a dock, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited listing information as its source.
Shaq regularly makes other small real-estate investments as well. In September 2006, for example, he paid $120,000 for a property in Orlando—where he used to play—and in March, he paid $380,000 for a condominium on Ocean Avenue in Miami, according to public records.