Is the $500 Million Bel Air Home The Most Expensive In the World?
The $500 million Bel Air Home will soon become the most expensive home in the world!
A film producer and speculative residential developer, named Nile Niami is building a mega mansion. The entire cost for the home is estimated around $500 million.
“The house will have almost every amenity available in the world,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The asking price will be $500 million.”
The Bel Air home was designed by Paul McClean and will take at least 20 more months to complete.
The home will showcase 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, Beverly Hills, downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
The 4.6-acre hilltop property will have a 74,000-square-foot main house and three smaller homes to total more than 100,000 square feet.
The project will boast a 5,000 sq ft master bedroom, 30-car garage, 45-seat cinema, four swimming pools including a 180ft long infinity pool, and a 20,000 sq ft lawn (artificial grass).
And of course, there will also be a personal nightclub and Monaco-style casino, as well as a jelly fish room with water-filled tanks on three walls.
Currently, the most expensive properties on the market include a $425 million estate in France’s Cote d’Azur, a $400 million penthouse in Monaco and a $365 million London manor.
One of the biggest homes in U.S. history is rising on a Los Angeles hilltop, and the developer hopes to sell it for a record $500 million.
Whether Niami can get more than double the previous record for his mansion remains to be seen.
“I’m skeptical,” said Jonathan Miller, president of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and a Bloomberg View contributor. “My first reaction is laughter. But we’re in this perpetual state of surprise as new thresholds are broken.”
The current highest U.S. asking price is $195 million for Palazzo di Amore, a Beverly Hills, California estate being offered by billionaire real estate entrepreneur Jeff Greene.
“It’s a jaw-dropping property,” Billy Rose, president of Beverly Hills-based brokerage Agency, said in an interview. He isn’t affiliated with Niami. “What he’s looking to build will be the everything house on the premier site in L.A.”
The average price of 37 homes sold in the first quarter in the Bel Air-Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles was $5.29 million, down 27 percent from a year earlier, when there were several “super deals,” according to an Agency report.
Peter McCoy, the contractor for a 53,000-square-foot mansion under construction on a Bel Air hilltop visible from Niami’s project, said:
“We used to think 18,000 or 20,000 square feet was massive,” said McCoy, who became a builder after working as chief of staff for former First Lady Nancy Reagan.
“The guys that are doing spec homes, they’re all sitting there hoping to hit a home run. You’ve got to be a big risk-taker, to like building big homes rather than going to Las Vegas.”
This mansion is set to be the largest built in the U.S. this century, surpassing Versailles, a 90,000-square-foot chateau in Windermere, Florida, under construction for David Siegel, founder and chief executive officer of Westgate Resorts.
Pretty impressive, isn’t it? Do you think he will manage to sell the home for $500 million?
