A Virginia-born quarterback who went into software and then finance has bought a winter house on Palm Beach’s oceanfront, from a waste-industry seller who had already moved somewhere grander.
Fran Tarkenton left professional football holding its passing records and spent the decades that followed in the slower sport of building companies with his surname on them. The latest thing to carry the name is a deed. His trust has bought a house on the stretch of South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach known as Billionaires Row, about a mile south of Mar-a-Lago. The route took 86 years: Richmond, Georgia, the Vikings, the Giants, a Hall of Fame bust, a software company, a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and, at the very end, a seller who had already bought himself a Mizner.
1940 to 1978, Richmond to the record book
He was born in Richmond, Virginia, on 3 February 1940. The first place to claim him properly was Georgia, where he played his college football for the Bulldogs, and the state has kept him ever since. The Hall of Fame gives Atlanta as his home, and The Real Deal still describes him and his wife, Linda, as “of Atlanta” this month.
Then came 18 seasons in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants. When he retired he had thrown for 47,003 yards and 342 touchdowns, both league records at the time. The Hall’s phrasing is courteous about it: records are held, not owned, and the words “at the time” carry the difference.
A quarterback’s numbers are public from the first snap. A businessman’s turn up in filings, and only sometimes.
1986, elected in January, enshrined by August
The Pro Football Hall of Fame elected him on 25 January 1986 and enshrined him on 2 August. Six months from vote to ceremony is the usual rhythm for the Hall, and for Tarkenton it closed the football chapter in a single calendar year.
The class of 1986 is marking its fortieth anniversary this year. So the Hall’s celebrations and the Palm Beach deed share a calendar, which makes it tempting to call the house an anniversary present. Nobody involved has put it that way, and it is probably kinder not to.
What the anniversary does show is distance. By 1986 Tarkenton had been out of uniform for the best part of a decade, and his name was already working in a different trade.
1994 to 1999, software, then the SEC
In 1994 his software company, KnowledgeWare, was sold to Sterling Software. For a former athlete it was the sort of exit the business pages like to call a second act, though the act had a coda.
The Securities and Exchange Commission later alleged that Tarkenton and others had engaged in a fraudulent scheme to inflate KnowledgeWare’s financial results. In 1999 he settled. According to the commission’s own litigation release, he consented, without admitting or denying the allegations, to a final judgment permanently enjoining him from securities fraud violations.
It was a civil settlement, and it ended there. He kept the name, kept going, and kept putting it on things.
2019, the Lomanginos take the corner lot
While Tarkenton was in Atlanta, the house that would become his was changing hands for the first time in this story. Anthony and Lynda Lomangino bought 1620 South Ocean Boulevard in 2019 for $12.7 million, according to The Real Deal. That outlet calls Anthony a “trash tycoon”; the politer description is that he made his money in the waste business.
The house was built in 2006, which by Palm Beach standards makes it nearly new. Since the town’s other address of note on this story is a Mizner from 1923, 2006 is practically last week. It is Mediterranean in style and sits on a corner lot of more than half an acre. Its beach frontage runs to 66 feet, exactly the length of a cricket pitch, and in a town where the ocean is the point, that figure is how a house is judged against its neighbours.
The Lomanginos did what buyers on this road tend to do with a good bone structure. According to their broker, Christian Angle Real Estate, they completed a full renovation of the interiors. Owners renovate when they plan to stay, or when they plan to sell well. The Lomanginos had form in both directions.
2024, three brands under one roof
In Atlanta, meanwhile, the business side was being tidied. In a September 2024 release, Tarkenton Companies described itself as an umbrella group whose brands include Tarkenton Financial, Tarkenton Private Capital and Perpetual Wealth Systems. The Real Deal names Fran Tarkenton as Tarkenton Financial’s chief executive and founder.
Two of the three brands carry the surname. The third, Perpetual Wealth Systems, carries the ambition.
Putting brands under one roof is the corporate version of clearing out the attic. It makes the house easier to read, and easier to leave in order. Tarkenton was 84 when the release went out, and he was still the man whose name sat on the door.
February 2026, the sellers buy a Mizner
The Lomanginos did not wait to sell before they bought. In February they acquired Villa Flora, a historic Palm Beach estate designed in 1923 by Addison Mizner, the architect whose Spanish and Mediterranean revival houses gave the town its look. The Real Deal put the price at $76.7 million.
That purchase sat on top of an earlier move. In June 2025 a company affiliated with Anthony Lomangino sold an oceanfront mansion he had developed on speculation at 1742 South Ocean Boulevard. Developing a house on speculation on Billionaires Row means building it with no buyer in mind, then waiting for one to arrive.
By DDW’s count, that makes three Palm Beach houses that changed hands with a Lomangino on one side of the deed in seventeen months: the spec house sold in June 2025, Villa Flora bought in February 2026, and 1620 South Ocean Boulevard sold this month. Some families collect paintings. This one collects frontage, then trades it.
Our reading of the Villa Flora deal is simple. A seller who has already bought the Mizner does not need to hold out for every dollar on the house he is leaving.
Autumn 2026, the broker names his price
Christian Angle’s own site says the house came to market in September at $59 million. Angle is one of the names on South Ocean Boulevard listings, and his firm handled the sale for the Lomanginos.
What the asking price bought, on paper, was 8,725 square feet behind that half-acre corner. According to The Real Deal, there is private beach access, a covered loggia, a newly built courtyard, a spa and a lift. The loggia is the room Palm Beach lives in, roofed, open-sided and pointed at the weather. The lift is for the later years, which in this town rarely mean slowing down.
On the other side of the table was Jana Scarpa of the Palm Beach Luxury Portfolio Group at Compass Florida, acting for the buyers. Buyers on this road are often a trust, a company or a family office; the people behind them arrive later, or in the winter.
November 2026, a deed for the winters
The deed was recorded in early November. The buyer of record is The Tarkenton Revocable Trust, with Fran Tarkenton as its trustee. A revocable trust is the American way of keeping a house both private and tidy for the next generation, and it is about as discreet as Palm Beach paperwork gets. The Real Deal reported the price as $51.9 million, some way under the asking price.
Scarpa told The Real Deal that Tarkenton and Linda Tarkenton had holidayed in Palm Beach before and had decided it was time for a winter home. That puts the purchase in a long Palm Beach tradition. The town has always filled in the cold months with people whose real addresses are somewhere else, and the Tarkentons’ is still Atlanta.
The price was not a record, either. The Lomanginos’ own Villa Flora purchase, earlier this year, came in higher.
So the quarterback who left the NFL with its passing records now winters on 66 feet of Atlantic beach, held in a trust that carries his name. The waste-industry entrepreneur who renovated it has moved on to the 1923 house.
The seller kept the Mizner.
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