Serenata Beach Club was sold in a foreclosure auction at noon Thursday, Sept. 12, for $1.5 million. That’s considerably less than the property’s assessed value of $4,464,097, as listed by the St. Johns County Property Appraiser’s Office.
The buyer is North American Trading Group Inc., a Delaware corporation, to which the plaintiff, DLP Lending Fund, had previously assigned the judgment.
The 17,956-square-foot property and parking lot, located at 3175 S. Ponte Vedra Blvd., South Ponte Vedra Beach, had been the subject of several reports in the media concerning the previous owners’ struggles to pay back loans.
The auction was the result of a failure to accomplish that.
DLP Lending Fund of Delaware with a branch at 405 Golfway West Drive, Suite 300, St. Augustine, filed suit against the previous owners, Molly Ann Butler and Jeffrey Byron Butler, as well as Bernoulli Growth Capital, on July 6, 2023, claiming that Serenata Beach Club executed a promissory note on April 20, 2022, in the amount of $8,586,000 and failed to pay all amounts that were due by May 1, 2023.
On July 18, 2024, Judge Howard Maltz of the Circuit Court of the 7th Judicial District ruled that the Serenata Beach Club owed DLP a total of $11,631,516, which included the principal, interest and various legal fees.
The foreclosure comes in the wake of reports of temporary shutdowns in 2023 and January 2024. In February 2024, the club announced its reopening after a period of renovation.
The property was sold online to the highest and best bidder for cash at saintjohns.realforeclose.com.
