The Wall Street Journal once named Gasparilla Island, on Florida’s hurricane-prone Gulf Coast, as one of the 10 best places to own a second home. Numerous sports, showbiz, and political luminaries such as Katherine Hepburn, Harrison Ford, George H.W. Bush, Jason Garrett, and Tom Brokaw have all been known to rent or own vacation homes on the low-lying barrier island. And for Washington D.C.-based Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, the island’s low-key but upscale Boca Grande community is the best place to own not just one but two multimillion-dollar getaways, one right next to another.
Just over three years ago, the popular (and polemical) conservative TV personality and heir to a TV dinner fortune — his father’s second marriage was to Patricia Swanson, heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune — splashed out $2.9 million for an architect-designed home enshrouded in lush tropical foliage and tax records reveal that last summer, he and wife Susan Andrews quietly plunked down another $5.5 million for the home next door.
The Carlsons’ newest acquisition was not listed on the open market so few details about the property are publicly available. However, property records and other resources indicate the single-story home was built in 1969, sits on more than a quarter-acre of property, and has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in about 2,800 square feet. Carlson closed on the U-shaped residence around the same time he was photographed palling around with Donald Trump and firebrand Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene at the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Invitational at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New York. (This was before Carlson’s private text messages were revealed in court documents related to Dominion Voting Systems’s just settled defamation lawsuit against Fox News that declared he hated and was fed up with the former president.)
The first Boca Grande home that the couple bought, with four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms in close to 3,000 square feet, has undergone an extensive renovation that included replacing the freeform pool with a simpler rectangular version.
Carlson has long been based in the nation’s capital where almost three years ago he and Andrews sold a traditional home of more than 9,000 square feet for $3.95 million, just slightly more than the $3.9 million paid in 2017.
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