Bob Vila (Yes, The 1990s PBS Home Remodel Guy) Seeks $53 MILLION For Palm Beach Island Mansion
ByBrian Warneron January 8, 2024inArticles›Celebrity Homes
All of today’s insanely-rich home renovation TV personalities – Joanna and Chip Gaines ( combined net worth $50 million ), Tarek and Christina El Moussa ( $15 and $25 million net worths, respectively ), Nicole Curtis ( $8 million ), Jonathan and Drew Scott ( combined net worth $200 million ), Bryan and Sarah Beaumler ( combined net worth $20 million )… and a dozen others – owe their entire careers to one man:
Bob Vila
For our younger readers who may not know that name, allow me to fill you in…
In 1979, Bob and WGBH launched “This Old House.” Unlike today’s shows that perform an entire home renovation in a single 22-minute episode, “This Old House” focuses on just a handful of homes all season long, performing renovations over multiple episodes. It was slower-paced, but viewers invested in the show’s projects. And its host.
“This Old House” was a massive hit out of the gate. And thanks to his easy-to-follow home improvement talents, pleasant demeanor, beard, and soon-to-be iconic plaid shirts, Bob Vila became a superstar. He hosted 235 episodes of “This Old House,” departing after the 10th season in 1989.
Why did Bob leave? There were several reasons, but a significant factor was money. And I’m not implying that Bob was greedy. You have to understand that “This Old House” turned Bob into one of the most famous celebrities in America. That’s not an exaggeration. And in the early seasons of “This Old House,” at a time when Alan Alda was making $300,000 per episode of MAS*H, and John Ritter was making $150,000 per episode of “Three’s Company,” Bob Vila’s salary per episode was $200 . That’s not a typo. In a 26-episode season, he made a TOTAL of $5,200. That’s the same as making around $15,000 per year today after adjusting for inflation. It wasn’t until later seasons that his salary was finally boosted to a still-meager $800 per episode. That’s roughly $20,000 per season, or $50,000 per year in today’s dollars. Bob easily could have made more money just being a full-time, standard home contractor without a TV show. But he knew how to capitalize.
One of the first things Bob did after leaving PBS in 1989 was sign a MAJOR endorsement contract with Sears. Specifically, he was hired to promote Sears’ Craftsman tool brand. Even younger readers may be now recalling Bob Vila from these once-ever-present commercials:
Sears Battle
In 1990, Bob wisely launched his own series, “Bob Vila’s Home Again,” which was syndicated by CBS for 16 seasons through 2005. The show’s primary sponsor was Sears.
In 2005, Sears was acquired by hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert . One of the first things that Lampert wanted to cut was Bob’s multi-million-dollar contract that was set to run for four more years.
Even though he was under contract with the retailer through 2009, weeks after Lampert took over in 2005, Bob learned that Sears was looking to kill his deal. Even after agreeing to a 75% pay cut, Sears wasn’t satisfied. And as if that wasn’t brutal enough, Sears also canceled its longtime sponsorship of “Bob Vila’s Home Again.” The loss of its main sponsor, when his ratings were declining, was a death blow, and “Home Again” ended in 2005.
Bob has hosted a few other shows in the years since his show ended. He also wrote a dozen books, launched a line of tools under his name, and published BobVila.com, which he sold in 2020 to digital home improvement conglomerate Recurrent Ventures. But, as it would turn out, Bob Vila’s best financial investment may be a Florida mansion.
Palm Beach Mansion
In 2005, Bob and his wife/longtime business partner, Diana Barrett, bought Diana’s late mother’s mansion on Everglades Island in Palm Beach, Florida. Diana’s parents purchased the estate in 1975 for $375,000. Bob and Diana bought it for $6.1 million.
As you might expect, Bob and Diana immediately began renovating. As you might NOT expect, he did not do any of the work himself. He hired a contractor. Can you imagine the pressure that guy felt? His client was LITERALLY BOB VILA.
Bob and Diana are looking to downsize (they’ve already paid $12.5 million for a nearby mansion), so they recently put their original Palm Beach mansion up for sale. Their asking price for the 7-bedroom, 7-bathroom, 6,300 estate?
$52.9 million
Let me repeat. $52.9 million. And believe it or not, that’s in line with recent comparable sales of similar homes on the exclusive Everglades Island. Here is a video tour:
What Happened to Sears and Eddie Lampert?
Under Eddie Lampert’s leadership, Sears’ revenue and profits plummeted. Thousands of employees lost their jobs. Sears, a once-iconic American brand founded in 1893, filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Eddie attempted to buy the company from bankruptcy, but the court rejected his offer.
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Howard Stern’s Palm Beach Mansion Is Worth At Least $300 Million (Based On His Next Door Neighbor’s Sale Price)
ByBrian Warneron December 17, 2025inArticles›Celebrity Homes
Trust me. This article will eventually be about Howard Stern’s Palm Beach mansion, but first, please follow me on a journey through time starting in the early 1990s…
In 1992, lifelong tinkerer John Sylvan set out to solve a common problem at offices around the world: Full coffee pots sit untouched for hours, growing cold, bitter, and stale before being dumped down the sink.
Sylvan’s idea to solve this problem was to invent a coffee machine that could brew single-serve disposable “pods” of coffee. In 1992, John and a college friend co-founded a company that would manufacture and sell his machines and pods. They called the company “Keurig.” Why? They looked up the word for “excellence” in a Dutch dictionary. Why Dutch? Because, as John would later explain, " everyone likes the Dutch ."
About a decade before Keurig was founded, a guy named Bob Stiller was served a cup of coffee at a cafe in Vermont called Green Mountain. He loved the taste so much that he didn’t just buy another cup… he bought the whole coffee shop.
By 1992 (the same year Keurig was founded), Green Mountain had grown from a single cafe in Vermont to seven locations. Over two thousand wholesale retailers sold Green Mountain beans, and the company generated $10 million in annual revenue. In 1993, Bob Stiller took Green Mountain public on the NASDAQ under the ticker GMCR.
In 1993, a year after Keurig was founded, Bob Stiller’s Green Mountain became the first outside investor in John Sylvan’s coffee pod company. In 1994, Keurig took on a second investment round, raising $1 million from a venture capital firm. With that investment, one of the principals from the VC firm was installed as Chairman of Keurig.
Unfortunately, John Sylvan did not get along with his new corporate bosses. Within a year, he was booted from the company he founded.
In 1997, John sold his entire stake in Keurig, which owned his invention – a product that would eventually generate hundreds of billions in revenue – for a grand total of…
$50,000
Over the course of several transactions between 1993 and 2006, Bob Stiller’s Green Mountain acquired 43% ownership of Keurig. In 2006, Green Mountain acquired the remaining 57%. The price Green Mountain paid for that 57%?
$104 million
The company was renamed Keurig Green Mountain.
By 2014, 95% of Keurig Green Mountain’s revenue – $4.3 billion – came from selling Keurig pods and machines. On December 7, 2015, JAB Holding Company acquired Keurig Green Mountain for…
$13.9 billion
The acquisition made Bob Stiller a billionaire. Today, his net worth is $1.2 billion.
A year before the $13.9 billion JAB acquisition, Bob paid $25 million for a 1.6-acre, oceanfront property in Palm Beach, Florida. The property features a 24,000 square foot mansion. In April 2023, Bob Stiller sold his property in an off-market deal to luxury car dealer Michael Cantanucci for…
$170 million
That set a new record (which still stands) for the Palm Beach area and is one of the most expensive real estate transactions in Florida history.
Howard Stern’s Mansion
A year before Bob bought his Palm Beach mansion, Howard Stern and his wife, Beth Ostrosky Stern, paid $52 million for the 3.25-acre property right next door. Stern’s property features several structures that have a combined 40,000 square feet of living space.
Now consider what Bob’s sale means for the value of Howard and Beth’s property.
In the photo below, Howard’s property is the larger one on the left. To reiterate, Howard’s buildings have 40,000 square feet of living space. Bob Stiller’s former property has 24,000 square feet. Howard’s property is on 3.25 acres. Bob Stiller’s is on 1.6 acres.
So Howard’s property is just under twice the size of Bob’s in terms of both living space and acreage.
And if Bob Stiller’s house sold in 2023 for $170 million, what does that make Howard’s estate worth? Conservatively, one must assume…
$300 million
By our count, before the Bob Stiller sale, Howard Stern’s net worth was $650 million. And that was based on an assumption that his Palm Beach house was worth $50 – 80 million. If it’s truly worth $300 million, one could make the argument that Howard Stern’s net worth is actually in the $800 million range.
What Happened to John Sylvan?
Today, John Sylvan lives in a perfectly nice home in Needham, Massachusetts, which he bought in 2007 for $530,000 and today is worth around $1.2 million.
Perhaps to make up for the environmental destruction caused by his invention, Sylvan now runs a solar company.
Speaking to The Atlantic around the time of Keurig’s $14 billion sale, John Sylvan had the following to say about his invention’s destructive impact on the world:
" I feel bad sometimes that I ever invented the K-Cup… I don’t have one. They’re kind of expensive to use. Plus it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make… It’s like a cigarette for coffee. A single-serve delivery mechanism for an addictive substance… No matter what they say about recycling, those things will never be recyclable. The plastic is a specialized plastic made of four different layers. "
An estimated 10 BILLION pods are sold each year. The vast, vast vast majority end up in landfills.
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