Where Does Willy Chirino Live in Florida? From Bay Point to Pinecrest

Where does Willy Chirino live? The Cuban-born salsa singer lives in Pinecrest, the village of large lots and old trees south of Coral Gables. He and his wife, the singer Lissette Alvarez, moved there in 2014 after selling their longtime home in Bay Point, a gated waterfront enclave in the City of Miami. Both deals made the papers, so this is one of the better-documented celebrity moves in Miami-Dade. Here is what the reporting says.

Key takeaways

• Pinecrest since 2014: the couple paid $2.3 million in cash for a six-bedroom house of about 6,300 square feet, per the Daily Business Review.
• Bay Point sold for $4.17 million: the 10,416-square-foot home they bought in 1992 for $795,000 closed in August 2014.
• A $3.4 million gain over 22 years: Diario Las Americas called the sale a real estate win as big as any of his hits.
• Pinecrest median list price is about $5.1 million on roughly 170 listings, per our MLS feed as of September 2026.

Where does Willy Chirino live in Florida?

Willy Chirino lives in Pinecrest, a village in Miami-Dade County known for acre lots, canopy roads and some of the top-rated public schools in the county. It sits south of Coral Gables and west of Biscayne Bay. Unlike the celebrity streets of Miami Beach, Pinecrest has no water frontage to speak of. People buy there for land, privacy and schools.

The Daily Business Review reported in 2014 that Chirino and Lissette bought a Pinecrest house for $2.3 million and paid cash. Diario Las Americas put the size at 6,316 square feet with six bedrooms. That is a big house by most standards, but it was a downsize. The home they left in Bay Point was about 10,400 square feet.

Chirino was born in Consolacion del Sur, Cuba, in 1947 and came to Miami as a boy in 1961 through Operation Pedro Pan. He has lived in Miami-Dade ever since. Pure Equity does not publish private addresses, so we describe both of his homes by neighborhood only.

Inside the reported homes

The house that made news was the one they sold. Bay Point is a gated community on Biscayne Bay in the City of Miami's upper east side, north of downtown and south of Miami Shores. The Daily Business Review reported that the couple bought their home there in April 1992 for $795,000. It grew, or was rebuilt, into a 10,416-square-foot house with six bedrooms and five bathrooms.

In August 2014 they sold it for $4.17 million. The Daily Business Review noted that Bay Point's residents over the years have included Cher, Matt Damon, Ricky Martin, Julio Iglesias and Anna Kournikova, which gives a sense of the neighborhood. Diario Las Americas did the math: a gain of about $3.375 million over 22 years. After paying cash for Pinecrest, the couple kept more than a million dollars from the sale.

The Bay Point house came back on the market later at a much higher price. Pricey Pads reported that the former Chirino home was listed at $12 million, which shows how far gated waterfront in the city has moved since 2014. Whether it sold at that price was not reported in the sources we found.

The Pinecrest house is less documented. Beyond the price, the size and the six bedrooms, no outlet described its features. Given the village's zoning, it likely sits on a lot of close to an acre, but that is a general fact about Pinecrest rather than a reported one about the house.

Why Willy Chirino chose Pinecrest

Neither Chirino nor Lissette explained the move in the reports we found, so we can only note what the deal itself says. They traded a large waterfront house for a smaller inland one and took cash out. That is a classic move for a couple in their sixties whose children have grown. Bay Point's gate and water views come with a big lot to maintain and, for a musician who still tours, a lot of house to leave empty.

Pinecrest offered a quieter setting with less to keep up and no seawall. It is also close to the Cuban-American core of the county. Chirino's audience, his radio shows and the venues he plays are spread across Miami-Dade, and Pinecrest puts him in the middle of them. The village has a long list of Latin entertainers and executives as residents for the same reason.

There is a musical footnote. Chirino has always been a Miami artist, from the Miami sound he helped shape in the 1970s to songs about the city itself. Moving within the county rather than out of it fits that history.

Lissette Alvarez has her own tie to the area. Born in Peru to Cuban parents and raised in Miami, she has recorded and performed here since the 1960s, and the couple have often worked together. A home near the studios and the Spanish-language stations in the county serves both careers. Two working artists in one house means location matters twice.

Where else does Willy Chirino live?

No other home is reported. Before Pinecrest there was Bay Point, and before that the couple had lived in Miami for decades. The public record shows one primary house at a time, held for a long stretch, and no vacation property. Chirino has said for years that he will not return to Cuba while the current government is in place, so the island is not a second home either.

That makes his pattern close to Jon Secada's, another Cuban-American star who has stayed in Miami-Dade his whole career. Both are hometown artists rather than transplants. The difference is that Chirino's two moves are on the record with prices attached, which is rare.

What homes near Willy Chirino cost

Pinecrest is one of the priciest inland markets in the county. Our MLS feed as of September 2026 shows about 170 active listings with a median list price of about $5.1 million and an average of around 130 days on market. That median is more than double the Coral Gables figure and about eight times the City of Miami median of roughly $639,000. The reason is lot size. Most Pinecrest listings are single-family homes on large parcels, with few condos to pull the number down.

The $2.3 million the Chirinos paid in 2014 would not buy the same house today. Six-bedroom homes of that size in the village now list well above the median in many cases. Sellers with a large lot and a newer house are in a strong position, though the pool of buyers above $5 million is small and homes take longer to move.

Bay Point, meanwhile, remains one of the few gated waterfront neighborhoods inside the City of Miami. You can see current listings on our Bay Point community page. For the broader picture, our gated communities and luxury homes collections cover both markets.

The two neighborhoods also answer different questions for a buyer. Bay Point is for someone who wants a gate, a dock and a short drive to downtown, and who will pay for all three. Pinecrest is for someone who wants land and schools and can live without the water. The Chirinos chose the first for two decades and the second for their later years. Plenty of Miami families follow the same path.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Willy Chirino live now?

He lives in Pinecrest, Florida, in a six-bedroom house he and Lissette Alvarez bought for $2.3 million in cash in 2014.

Where in Pinecrest does Willy Chirino live?

Reports name only the village, not a specific street or subdivision. Pinecrest is a single municipality without gated enclaves of the Bay Point kind. We do not publish addresses.

Where does Willy Chirino live full time?

Pinecrest is his full-time and only reported home. So the plain answer to where does Willy Chirino live is a house in the village, with no second residence in the record.

How much did Willy Chirino sell the Bay Point home for?

The house sold for $4.17 million in August 2014, per the Daily Business Review. The couple had paid $795,000 for it in April 1992.

Can you buy a home in Bay Point?

Yes. Bay Point is a gated waterfront community in the City of Miami with a small number of homes, and listings come up a few times a year. The former Chirino house later listed at $12 million.

Is Willy Chirino from Miami?

He was born in Cuba and arrived in Miami in 1961 as a teenager through Operation Pedro Pan. He has lived in Miami-Dade County since.

If you own a home in Pinecrest, Bay Point or anywhere in Miami-Dade County and want to know what it would sell for, get a free home valuation from Pure Equity. Buyers can browse Pinecrest listings or see luxury homes across South Florida. Related reading: where Jon Secada lives and where Marc Anthony lives.

Sources

• Daily Business Review, music stars Willy Chirino and wife Lissette sell Miami house for $4M
• Diario Las Americas, Willy Chirino shines in music and in real estate
• Pricey Pads, Willy Chirino's former Miami home hits the market for $12M

Based on publicly reported information; details may change and are not independently verified by Pure Equity. We do not publish private addresses.