Florida : J.B. Pritzker buys $12M horse farm

The same week he was elected governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker paid $12.1 million for an equestrian estate in Florida, according to a report. 

• J.B. Pritzker holds more private wealth than any other governor in U.S. history and is the second-wealthiest U.S. politician to have ever held office, after Michael Bloomberg.

Pritzker and his wife, MK, bought the 6.44-acre estate in Wellington, near Palm Beach, through a legal entity called 3 Flamingos managed by JB PRitzker's brother-in-law, the South Florida Business Journal reported Nov. 9. According to real estate site Redfin, the sale closed Nov. 8. If correct, that would mean the Pritzkers closed their purchase two days after he was elected.

A member of the billionaire Pritzker family, JB Pritzker contributed $171 million to his campaign.

The property on Grand Prix Farms Drive has stalls for 30 horses and a riding area. The Pritzkers also have a 230-acre horse farm on the Illiniois-Wisconsin border in Kenosha County that he bought her as a 10th-anniversary gift in 1998. What they paid for it could not be determined from Kenosha County records. MK Pritzker is a lifelong rider who was a leader in the planning for equestrian events in Chicago's failed bid for the 2016 Olympics.

The Pritzkers' new Florida farm is next door to the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center, and according to the property listing, horses can be walked from the Pritzker property to the center's Winter Equestrian Festival, which a Palm Beach tourism website describes as "the world's premier winter equestrian event."

According to the listing, the Grand Prix Farms Drive property is not residential, although there's a one-bedroom apartment for the property manager. The facility includes a riding ring "with state-of-the-art flooring made for grand prix jumping" and "all 30 stalls are equipped with Nelson automatic horse waterers. When the horse drinks, the bowl auto fills back to full."

In Chicago, the couple live on Astor Street, where they paid a combined $18.17 million for a pair of neighboring houses. They bought a 13,000-square-foot mansion for $14.5 million in May 2006, and the house next door, 6,300 square feet, in December 2007, for $3.67 million.

The smaller of those houses was the subject of disclosures in 2017 that the toilets were ripped out, resulting in the Pritzkers saving more than $330,000 in property taxes. In October, the Cook County Inspector General determined that yanking out the toilets was "a scheme to defraud," and Pritzker said he would pay the amount.

The couple also own a Lake Geneva estate called Casa del Sueno that they bought for $9.7 million in 2004, and reportedly built a home in the Bahamas, whose value could not be determined.