Two weeks before he would become one of the year’s most famous and polarizing Republican nominees for office, Mehmet Oz was approved for a large tax exemption on a house he owns in a community close to his heart.
The tax break wasn’t for Oz’s newly purchased home in Pennsylvania, the state he is trying to represent in the U.S. Senate. And it wasn’t for any of his properties in New Jersey, which critics argue is Oz’s true home state.
It was for a house in Palm Beach, Florida, a playground for the wealthy that Oz has described as “heaven.”
A multi-million-dollar upgrade to his beachfront mansion in the area — including the installation of a new outdoor pool and spa — led to Palm Beach County commissioners on May 3rd signing off on a tax exemption meant to encourage the rehabilitation of old historic homes. The abatement, according to documents reviewed by the Miami Herald, could save Oz a half-million dollars or more over the next 10 years.
As Oz fends off attacks that he is an interloper and ongoing criticism that he owns 10 homes, the tax exemption — and the time and money invested in Palm Beach to receive it — are reminders of Oz’s deep and varied ties to Florida, connections that include stakes in local businesses, ownership of at least two properties in the state, and a leadership position in an area civic association. In interviews over the years, he has repeatedly cited it as a special place for both him and his family.
“Palm Beach is my ‘chi’ source, a place I come to regroup,” Oz told Palm Beach Life magazine in 2009.
The breadth of Oz’s associations with the Sunshine State — and the praise he’s ushered on Palm Beach in particular — go beyond the occasional vacation.
A 2018 story in Boca Raton Magazine referred to Oz as a “part-time Palm Beach resident,” interviewing him about what he enjoys while in the area and asking him his favorite local restaurants. Palm Beach Illustrated in 2019 named him one of Palm Beach County’s “top physicians,” publishing an interview with the doctor in which he said he and his family hoped to spend more time in the area.
Oz has… invested serious time and money into his beachfront mansion, known as Louwana. He and his wife, Lisa, purchased the Palm Beach home through a trust for $18 million in 2015, documents show. The landmarked house, built in 1919 and designed by famed South Florida architect Addison Mizner, abuts the beach and is billed as one of the “last great houses of Palm Beach,” according to a listing from Sotheby’s International Realty.
Documents reviewed by the Miami Herald showed the renovation, which lasted from March 2018 to September 2020, would eventually include a new kitchen, game room, gym, guesthouse and garage.
The rehabilitation work also included the construction of a new outdoor spa — at a cost of $13,800, per a construction permit application filed in November 2019 — just feet from a newly refurbished pool, which had been built into the structure of the old pool. The work on the new pool was valued at $51,000, according to documents filed with the Town of Palm Beach Building Division in October 2019.
The exemption could save the doctor nearly $61,000 in taxes annually, at current tax rates, according to calculations by the Miami Herald. Over a decade, that would amount to savings of $610,000.
Louwana is not the only land the Republican candidate owns in Florida. In December of last year, the same month he purchased his home in Bryn Athyn, Pa., Oz — through a trust — purchased three parcels of farmland in Okeechobee County, according to the county’s property appraiser. The land was purchased for nearly $6.5 million.
Beyond owning property, Oz also spent time working with on-the-ground organizations in Florida, especially the Palm Beach Civic Association. Oz became a director of the Palm Beach Civic Association in March 2017, according to Senate disclosure forms, and remained one until at least April of this year.
“You guys are living in heaven,” Oz told an audience in 2013, during an interview with a local TV station at Palm Beach Gardens, a community just west of Palm Beach. “You may not realize you’re in heaven, but you’re absolutely in heaven. Just an incredible part of the country.”
