Sports betting icon's home sold for $13M

Sports betting icon Billy Walters sold his 9-acre Rancho Santa Fe estate earlier this month at auction for $13 million, one of the highest prices secured for a home this year, according to public records.
The estate, called El Milagro, Spanish for “The Miracle,” was listed in July for $19.995 million before Walters decided to go to auction.
The property includes a 21,000-square-foot home that has seven bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, three half bathrooms, and a variety of amenities, including a tennis court, pool and putting green.
Walters bought the home in 2010 for $8.5 million and then invested $7 million of his own money to renovate and improve interior design, according to a news release from Concierge Auctions.
Walters said in a video advertising the auction that he and his wife, Susan, planned to make El Milagro their home, but decided instead to live in one of their other properties closer to the coast. He noted that it was a difficult decision.
Had El Milagro sold at the original list price, it would have been moreexpensive than any home sold in the county in 2013. In June, a home sold on Avenida Primavera in Del Mar for $14.5 million.
Last year, the most expensive home sold locally was on Ocean Front in Del Mar, for $18.75 million.
Statewide, a record 265 homes sold for more than $5 million in the second quarter of this year, CoreLogic DataQuick reports.
Walters was in the news during the summer after federal authorities launched an insider trading probe involving Walters, golfer Phil Mickelson, also of Rancho Santa Fe, and investor Carl Icahn, The Wall Street Journal reported. All three denied any wrongdoing. The New York Times later reported that Mickelson’s role was overstated.
The deal closed Sept. 5. The buyer was Frederic Luddy, an executive at ServiceNow Inc., a provider of IT service management software.