‘Members Only: Palm Beach’ Star Hilary Musser Grants Access to Palm Beach Mansion With Direct View of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

“Members Only: Palm Beach” star Hilary Musser is a real estate designer, developer, and broker who builds and sells luxury waterfront homes in South Florida, including her own West Palm Beach abode that boasts unparalleled views of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.

Much like the multimillion-dollar vistas her projects are known for, including the newly constructed mansion that she recently listed for the sky-high price of $42.5 million, the 60-year-old socialite lives a life that opens itself up to the prying eyes of the public.

While some may have been introduced to Hilary through her role in the new Netflix hit, her moment in the spotlight began long before she joined the streaming site's new reality TV project.

In the latest Celebrity Sanctuary, Hilary recounts to Realtor.com how she was first thrust into the limelight when she married her second husband, billionaire Pete Musser, while living in Philadelphia. 

“Since I've been young, 29 years old, I've been a little bit in the public eye,” says Hilary. “The minute my son was born, it was, like, ‘The pitter patter of little feet’ in the newspaper the next day.” 

Two years after the birth of their son, Cooper Musser, now 22, Hilary admits she divorced Pete “because he was unfaithful.”

Not wanting to be pigeonholed as “Pete Musser’s ex-wife,” the Boston native initially fled the City of Brotherly Love for Nantucket, but ultimately fell for Palm Beach while visiting the exclusive enclave on a whim.

“Cooper was two and a half, and a friend of mine, her husband was going down on a private plane to their house in Palm Beach to do some business, and she said, ‘Why don’t you fly down with Bob and look at houses?’ I left with a house next to Mar-a-Lago on Woodbridge—137 Woodbridge Road,” explains Hilary.

That 2005 purchase, which she has since sold, put Hilary back in the headlines, this time, for scoring a substantial deal from the prominent family who sold her the home.

“I bought that house from a very famous family, the Glazers,” she recalls. “They own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they own Manchester United. I joke that it was their starter home, even though it was a brand-new, beautiful home that this company, Ecclestone [Signature Homes], built. 

“They sold it to me, and I remember this article in the paper saying, ‘Socialite Hilary Musser moved from Philadelphia to Palm Beach and steals this megamansion next to Mar-a-Lago for $6 million,’ because they had had it listed for, like, $8 [million].”

The move established Hilary’s position in Palm Beach in more ways than one—as a homeowner and, perhaps more consequentially, as a member of its high society.

“That's how I became a member of Mar-a-Lago. All the houses on that street came with a membership, because when [Trump] was rebuilding the estate, he gave everybody a membership so that they wouldn't complain about his construction noise,” shares Hilary. “You still had to pay the dues, but you didn’t have to pay an initiation fee.” 

While Hilary has since spent 21 social seasons in the Palm Beach area and has reaped the benefits of being firmly entrenched in its most exclusive social circle, she reveals that the president’s courtesy of comping his club’s sign-up fee ended the moment she relocated off the same street as his high-profile resort.

“Of course, they made me pay it when I moved,” she notes. “Like the day I moved, the general manager was there at my moving truck. I'm like, ‘Are you serious? You couldn't even give me a day?’ And so long story short, I ended up here.” 

Now, Hilary enjoys a direct view of Mar-a-Lago from across the Intracoastal Waterway in her 2021-built, five-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion that she designed herself.

Located on a sprawling waterfront parcel that she snapped up for the relatively low price of $5 million in 2020, the extraordinary property is the epitome of luxury, complete with every modern amenity a person could ever desire.  

The self-made real estate entrepreneur shares the transitional-style residence with her fifth husband, Luke, and keeps an open-door policy for their respective sons when they’re in town. She also hosts lavish parties there for wealthy friends, including her “Members Only: Palm Beach” co-stars.

As the Netflix personality fully embraces the attention she’s receiving from her participation on the new show, which premiered on Dec. 29, she’s also protecting her privacy when she feels too exposed.

In this edition of Celebrity Sanctuary, Hilary offers a window into her world by detailing the Jack-and-Jill-style primary spa bathroom where she finds complete seclusion whenever the Sunshine State’s spotlight becomes too bright.

I built this home. Originally, I thought it would be a spec, but I was living next door when I decided that I liked this house better, so it soon became my house. Built by myself, decorated by myself, designed by myself. I moved in in September of 2021.

[Cooper is] happily living in Williamsburg and is visiting. My husband's two boys also visit from Europe. The best part of the house is Winston, our 6-year-old Bernedoodle, who is literally the cutest thing ever.

I really love contemporary-[style homes], but I'm in the historic district of Prospect Park in West Palm [Beach], and the historic committee wouldn't let me do another modern house right next to the one that I was living in and built. 

The square footage of the house is 8,800 under air. Total square footage, it's closer to 11,000 because they count the covered patios in the total square footage.

Bedrooms, [there are] five, because there's four and a guesthouse. There's six full bathrooms because I have a full bathroom in the gym in case somebody wanted to ever make it into a mother-in-law's suite, and then two powders, so eight bathrooms.

I hate the word transitional, but I'm going to use it. On the front of the house, it's more traditional. There's a lot of cast stone and French doors.

On the back of the house, they let me do much more contemporary, so all your sliders and more of the openness of the house is in the back. It looks really kind of modern from the back, and from the front, it looks transitional.

The home is only four to five years old, so it's pretty current, and I haven't renovated anything. 

Early in the process, I decided it was a house for me, for my own purposes, and I built the bathroom for myself. 

My sanctuary is my bathroom, because my office, as beautiful as it is ... is like a fishbowl. I have these big, huge insulated glass doors looking right at Mar-a-Lago on the water.

I'm at, like, 6 o'clock and they’re at 2 o'clock. I'm right across, and I can see everything from here. 

Anybody that's in my house can see me, and it irritates me because I'm completely easily distracted. When I really need silence, pure silence, and I just am tired of people looking through the glass doors in my office, I hibernate in my bathroom. I still have the water, the same view. 

I have a salon area, and I have one of those big, comfy chairs, which goes up and down when I do my hair. I sit in that chair, and my workplace in front of me is where I do my makeup. I could stay in there for hours, totally happy, and lock the door. 

The whole east elevation of the bathroom is looking through the window, out [to] the water, the beautiful view of the mansions, and Mar-a-Lago’s tower. 

It's floor-to-ceiling pebble tile, which is black and white, so big slabs that look like marble, but they're really tile. 

I have this humongous Kohler bathtub where the water comes from the ceiling. At the time, I thought it was a really cool feature, even though it splashes all over the place. I do also have a regular faucet that I added. 

The L-shaped unit where I sit is made of a beautiful, almost 10-inch-thick wood that's finished so that it doesn't get ruined with water. It was custom-made in Italy, and floating cabinets on either side in a big space for me to get my hair done. 

Then [there are] big, huge mirrors with the TV in them, black-framed, beautiful mirrors that I had made. 

The shower's all smoky glass, so if I want to leave my shades up, nobody can see me showering from the water; otherwise, you could see right in. 

If you keep going back, there's a kitchen and there's a sauna and then the shampoo bowl in the back. But the place that I sit is in the front room. 

The bathroom’s pretty big, and I really just feel so safe there. I can lock my bedroom door and lock the bathroom door, and even my husband can't come in.

He gets mad, but I think it's funny. I got to have my own bathroom. Do not share a bathroom with a man. That's a hard no.