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Question: What home has a total area of 32,700 square footage, 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, two 3-car garages, boat docks for 5 boats, and is the hottest tourist attraction in Tampa?
Answer: It’s the house that Derek Jeter built.
The certificate of occupancy for Jeter’s second Tampa home — located at Bahama Circle and Baffin Avenue — was granted in January 2011.
The eclectic, English manor style home on the waterfront in Davis Islands, Florida is the largest home in Hillsborough County.
Jeter also has a 4,493 sq. ft. $1M residence in nearby north Tampa in Avila Golf & Country Club.
For The Record… Jeter’s 5,425 square foot Trump World Tower penthouse sold for $15.5M in 2012. The penthouse was originally purchased in 2001 by Derek Jeter for $12.6M. At the time, it was double the size of the other penthouses in the building.
The retired Yankees shortstop is living large — to say the least.
How The Derek Jeter Mansion Was Built
Jeter (d/b/a Kered Connors, LLC) purchased 2 lots (with homes still on them) on the waterfront back in 2005 and 2006 for a total of just under $7.67M and then spent a hefty sum to raze the houses that were on those lots in order to make room for his new abode.
He needed every last inch of acreage that both lots provided for the footprint of this very large home.
NOTE: Kered is Derek spelled backwards. Cute, eh? His father, Charles, is the sole officer of Kered Connors LLC — while Derek is the sole member of the corporation. It’s all in the family.
Derek Jeter entrusted the architects at R. Gary Hancock of Winter Park Design to put the plan together and see it through, while the general contractor on site was J. O. DeLotto & Sons, Inc.. Plans and construction for the home began in August of 2008, and the house was completed in late 2010.
There wasn’t a mortgage taken out on the home (yes…a cash purchase), but I dug into the Hillsborough County Property Tax Assessors website to get the scoop on Jeter’s Davis Islands home.
It has been reported that the house itself cost anywhere from $6.2M to $7.3M to build — depending on the source. Either way, it’s a hefty price tag for a very unique home.
The assessed value for property tax purposes is nearly $12M. Zillow estimates the home’s current value at just over $15M.
An interesting read: Is Derek Jeter’s Tampa Mansion A Tax Shelter?
Details Of Derek Jeter’s Tampa Home
According to the New York Post, Jeter doesn’t allow cameras and phones into his Tampa mansion. Derek Jeter has a strict “no camera or phones” rule when it comes to his sprawling Florida mansion. We’re told the famously private Yankee has a basket in the foyer of his 30,875-square-foot, multimillion dollar Davis Island home, dubbed by locals “St. Jetersburg.” All guests are expected to plunk down their camera phones before entering his castle. “He points and says, ‘Phones go there,’ so no one can take pictures inside his house.”
– Source
So, what did Derek Jeter get for around $14M in Tampa?
- 320 feet of waterfront property
- 1.26 acres totaling 55,023 sq.ft. of property
- 32,700 total sq.ft. 2-story home (including 21,796 total sq.ft. of heated space)
- A pool with hot tub
- Humongous grand entertainment room
- Billiard room
- 2,500 sq.ft. master suite with closets the size of most bedrooms (getting from the bed to the toilet is a haul!)
- Two 3-car garages (one on each wing)
- Memorabilia room
- 7 bedrooms
- 9 bathrooms
- Drive-thru portico to keep guests dry getting in and out of their cars
- 5 boat docks including 2 boat lifts
- Hardwood and tile floors throughout
- Slate and mansard roof
- 4 fireplaces
- Stone and masonry stucco exterior
- Gables, gables, and more gables
- …and much more!
Here are photos of Derek Jeter’s Davis Islands home — from construction through completion.
When the house was built, Derek Jeter got a variance from the city to build a 6-foot privacy wall around the portion of the property opposite the bay — instead of the 4 feet height limit that city rules allow.
A few years later, he got another variance to replace his 6-foot security gate with “a new gate that’s 8 feet tall at its highest point and opaque so that passers-by can’t see into his property.”
More power to him.
Must read: How Derek Jeter Is Spending His Time After Retirement
I started as a home-stalker… visiting brand new homes under construction in the neighborhoods near my house. That inspired me to write about home building and home renovation projects — chronicling homes during different phases of construction from a consumer's point-of-view. Basically, the tips you'll find in my articles are a collection of checklists for what I think should (and should not) go into building or remodeling a quality home.
