Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former presidential hopeful, has unloaded his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., for $920,000.
The neurosurgeon-turned-conservative politician sold the mini-mansion to a real estate executive from Washington, D.C., said listing agent Arthur Martens of Engel & Vӧlkers.
The sale relieves Carson, 65, of having to look after three homes. He had snapped up a larger house in West Palm Beach for $4.4 million shortly before President Donald Trump named him to a cabinet position—requiring the Carsons to buy a third residence close to the U.S. capital.
Carson and his wife, Lacena “Candy” Carson, said they were pleased to have found a buyer in a statement about the closing.
“We didn’t have any urgency, but we didn’t want to be carrying a bunch of properties that we weren’t utilizing either, so we knew Arthur would put the appropriate amount of interest into the sell,” Carson said in the statement.
His former house sits on a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. The ornate Mediterranean-style villa, built in 1994, has large windows, 22-foot ceilings, marble floors, built-in shelves, and comes with membership to the development’s golf course and clubhouse, according to the former listing with Martens.
Carson and his wife bought the property in 2013 from the late John Rooney, whose family owns the Pittsburgh Steelers. Some football paraphernalia from the Rooneys’ time was still hanging around a media room in the house when the Carsons put it on the market in December.
The agent who brokered the deal, a fellow church member of the Carsons in West Palm Beach, also helped facilitate their house hunting outside of Washington, D.C., Carson said.
They settled on a $1.22 million brick Colonial in Vienna, Virginia. “We were able to relatively quickly find a beautiful home,” Carson added.