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A company tied to Lionel Messi paid $8 million for the house next door to his Fort Lauderdale home, according to property records reported on Sept. 24.
The purchase joins two waterfront lots into a single compound. Together the adjoining properties run to 0.8 acres with 330 feet of direct water frontage, 15 bedrooms and more than 18,100 square feet of interior space.
The new house at 71 Compass Lane was built in 1977 and covers 7,660 square feet, with seven bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, a waterfront pool and 160 feet of its own frontage. The price works out at $1,045 a square foot.
Michael and Michelle Nelson sold it. They bought the house in 2013 for $2.7 million, which leaves them a gain of $5.3 million before fees and whatever they spent on it.
The buyer was Sadani LLC, registered in the name of Alfonso Nebot Armisen, a Spanish banker who has run Messi's private investment firm since 2009 and serves as secretary of the Leo Messi Foundation. The same entity holds the house next door.
Messi and his wife Antonela Roccuzzo bought that property, at 91 Compass Lane, for $10.8 million in September 2023, two months after he joined Inter Miami. It has eight bedrooms across 10,500 square feet, two docks and 170 feet of water frontage, and was built in 1988 and extended in 2000. Its sellers, John and Stacy Dickerson, had paid $9 million for it in May 2022.
Both houses sit in Bay Colony, a guard-gated community on one of Fort Lauderdale's canals.
Buying the neighbouring house has become a standard move among the very wealthy, who assemble compounds to control who lives beside them and what gets built there.
By the standards of that group, Messi has spent lightly. Several of his peers have put more than $100 million into single trophy properties on the South Florida waterfront. What the purchase does suggest is that he intends to stay in the area.
He owns three condominiums in Sunny Isles Beach as well, including a full-floor unit he bought for $7.3 million and an apartment in the Porsche Design Tower.
Messi is 39 and has earned more across his career than all but four athletes in history. Sportico put his career total at $1.99 billion in its ranking this month, behind Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James.
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