Capone's Old Palm Island Lot Sells for $21M, No House Left to Save

A 0.7-acre lot on Miami Beach’s Palm Island, the site of Al Capone’s former waterfront estate, sold for $21 million in a deal that closed in August 2026, according to The Real Deal. The buyer is Ilya Karpov, a Russian investor and former general director at the OGO Group, a Russian grain and oil producer that went bankrupt in 2013. The sellers, Albert and Karise Claramonte, had bought the property in 2021 for $15.5 million and held it in trust. There is no house on the land. The 1922 Spanish-style mansion where Capone spent his final years was demolished in August 2023 after a bid to grant it historic status collapsed, and the buyer is acquiring 100 feet of bay frontage on a 30,000-square-foot parcel with a clean slate.

Why it matters

For brokers and agents working South Florida’s ultra-luxury tier, this is a land comp, not a celebrity story. A trophy address with zero structure still commanded $21 million, up from $15.5 million paid for the same dirt five years earlier, a sign that waterfront scarcity on Miami Beach’s private islands is pricing land on its own terms, independent of what sits on it. It also settles, in this instance, what a buyer can do with a “historically significant” house in Miami Beach: nothing, once it is gone. The city’s Historic Preservation Board scrapped its hearing on the property in 2023 after the city attorney found a new state law stripped it of authority to designate the site without the owner’s consent. Anyone assembling land near Miami waterfront with an aging structure on it should read that outcome as the operative precedent, not the Capone name.

The numbers

The lot last traded at $14.9 million when first listed in 2018, sold for $15.5 million in 2021, went back on the market at $23.5 million in May 2026, and closed at $21 million in August, an 8.5 percent discount to ask. Miami-Dade’s own parcel record puts the site at roughly 31,744 square feet on file, matching the reported 30,000-square-foot lot with 100 feet of frontage.

What’s next

Karpov has not stated redevelopment plans. The Real Deal notes his prior activity points toward a spec build rather than a personal residence, though that is inference, not an announced plan. Watch the Miami-Dade building department for a permit application on the folio; that filing, not another headline, will be the next verifiable fact.