Silicon valley billionaire Jim Clark and wife Kristy Hinze list Florida mega mansion for $181 million

Billionaires – they’re just like us. Buy a fixer-upper, do some renovations, make your own mark on the place  and then sell it when you and the family are ready to move on.

It’s a bit different though for Jim Clarke, co-founder of Netscape Communications, and his Australian former-model wife Kristy Hinze. They are selling their waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida – “Il Palmetto”, as it’s known –  and it’s on the market for a cool $US137 million ($181 million).

The 1930s Italian renaissance-style mansion was dreamed up by Maurice Fatio, a noted society architect, and commissioned by industrialist Joseph Widener. It was reportedly deteriorating by the time Clark picked it up in 1999.  

He spent four years renovating it, adding a carved limestone 20,000 bottle wine cellar and a Morrocan-style indoor-outdoor space for entertaining.

The Sothebys listing for the six-bedroom, 5606-square-metre home describes it as “a series of pavilions connected by cloisters” with a two-storey entrance hall. The property is set on eight hectares, and has a separate beach house with infinity pool and a tunnel under the South Ocean Boulevard leading to it, so dazzled guests can hit the beach without having to cross the road. 

Clarke, a keen yachtsman and co-producer of 2009 movie The Cove, married Hinze in 2009, at which time he was the only man in history to have set up three separate billion-dollar companies. Kristy Hinze, a showjumping enthusiast, had horses competing at the recent Rio Olympics.

They also sold their Point Piper waterfront apartment in the Sienna building for more than $8 million earlier in the year.