Naples investor builds luxury home of future with Tesla roof

A longtime Collier County investor bought a piece of the past and then went to work building the luxury home of the future.

The end result, at 655 Park Shore Court in Naples, soon will hit the market at $8.9 million following final city inspections.

The five-bedroom, two-story home with a pool has energy-efficient appliances throughout and a Tesla roof that both protects the 5,900-square-foot house from the elements and powers it with solar-powered technology. It’s the first Tesla roof to be installed in the Park Shore community, said George Vukobratovich, CEO of Welsh Commercial Real Estate and owner of the property.

Tim Savage, of Gulf Coast International Properties, will be the listing agent.

“You couldn’t do this house in Golden Gate,” Vukobratovich said. “This had to be here in Park Shore. This home, the amenities, the lifestyle that’s here, the different shopping venues, it fit for this market.”

Vukobratovich paid $2.4 million for a home built in1984 that was flooded by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Instead of remodeling it, he scraped it in late 2023 and assembled a team to rebuild from scratch.

The team included Jordan Poppa, president of Poppa Construction, the home’s contractor, and Eric Perez, president of Coastal Energy, which supplied and installed the Tesla roof.

Poppa Construction built the home about 5 feet higher than the previous one, which would have prevented flooding from Hurricane Ian. Storm surge water from hurricanes Helene and Milton last year went no higher than the top of the new home’s driveway.

The challenge for Poppa became how to fit two stories of house into a compressed space, because local building codes limit the height to 30 feet — base flood elevation plus 1 foot.

Poppa previously focused on building commercial, office and retail centers. This marked his first foray into residential.

“Residential allows us to explore a little more technology and higher-end finishing,” Poppa said. “We don’t get to do that on the commercial side, because everything is built on their budgets. And how much you can spend.”

With a blank canvass with which to build, but a limited space, the design called for a vaulted ceiling in the front entryway that rises along with the staircase to the second floor, which has its own laundry room and kitchenette — and an elevator as well to get there.

A chandelier hanging from the entryway’s ceiling can be descended at the push of a button for cleaning.

The ground floor has a kitchen overlooking the dining room and, behind it, a butler’s kitchen and laundry room.

The primary bedroom has two walk-in closets and a bathroom with a tub, a shower with multiple shower heads and jets, two toilets, two sinks, etc.

The living room has a showpiece of a fireplace with no fire. Instead, water vapor flows upward. A remote control can change the color of the water vapor, giving it the appearance of fire with no heat being generated.

The garage has four Tesla power pack batteries instead of the typical one. Should power be lost, the batteries can stockpile enough energy to completely power the home.

“Obviously, we wanted to make it as efficient as possible for a homeowner,” Poppa said. “No matter how much money they have, they’re always going to be concerned about carrying costs, so we tried to minimize that.”

The roof and batteries cost about $300,000, and the roof shingles should provide about $400,000 in energy savings over the 25-year life of the warranty, Perez said.

“This is the future,” Perez said. “Because every home needs a roof, right?

“This actually has the highest wind test rating for the state of Florida. It’s rated for 194 mph winds.”

Vukobratovich said he looks forward to finally getting the home on the market.

“We’ve been quiet about it, because we wanted to make sure that the engineering was good,” he said. “We eliminated generators. We eliminated propane tanks. We wanted the marketplace to be exposed to this, because it’s the future.”