Swedish Billionaire Drops $70 Million on Spec-Built Bev Hills Mansion
BUYER: Not Jay-Z and Beyoncé LOCATION: Beverly Hills, Calif. PRICE: $70,000,000 SIZE: 23,000 square feet, 8 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Mid-priced purse tycoon and avocational real estate investor Bruce Makowsky paid $12.65 million in August 2012 for a nearly 7,000-square-foot mid-century modern house on a prime parcel near the tail end of a long cul-de-sac above the western terminus of the Sunset Strip in the preposterously pricy and almost comically trendy Trousdale Estates ‘hood in Beverly Hills.
Mister Makowsky, a busy and keen player at the highest end of the high-end real estate marketplace in Los Angeles, quickly razed the house and replaced it with a sexed-up and sensationally sybaritic adult playpen finished and furnished with the most expensive fixtures, materials and comestibles money can buy. Amid global hubbub and a slew of skeptical tongue waggers, the very contemporary mansion was heaved onto the open market as a fully furnished residential extravaganza in mid-September (2014) with a publicity-ensuring $85,000,000 asking price.
According to the scuttlebutt last week, a bidding war broke out for the high-priced property, and one of the parties widely rumored to be involved were music and entertainment industry superstars Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Alas, Jay-Bey or Beyje or whatever they get called in the tabs were not successful in their (alleged) bid because, as per the official press release on the matter, the new owner of the property is 35-year-old Swedish billionaire Markus “Notch” Persson. Again as per the press release, the $70 million dollar sale price, which closed in just six days, makes it the highest for a single-family home in Beverly Hills.
The mostly flat, nearly one-acre property possesses the dernier cri ne plus ultra of L.A. real estate with what can only and accurately be described as quintessential jetliner views that sweep across L.A. from downtown to — on a clear day — the Pacific Ocean. The 23,000-square-foot mansion was marketed as a carefully curated “all-inclusive” environment and was indeed sold fully fitted and kitted down to a trove of flashy artworks spread throughout the house, a collection of Bentley-branded leather sofas in the living room, and numerous cases of Dom Perignon stashed in the glass-walled wine room.
There are a total of eight bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, each of the latter equipped with a $5,600 potty for a total toilet acquisition cost of $84,000. Let’s apply some real people perspective to that amount of money, shall we? A California minimum wage worker who earns $9 per hour would need to work 9,333 hours to earn $84,000 in pre-tax income. If we drill down a bit further we calculate 9,333 work hours translates to almost 4.5 years of consecutive 40-hour work weeks just to pay for the 15 toilets in this one house. Does anyone else need a cocktail and/or an extra-strength nerve pill to digest that? Anyhoodles, poodles…
The giddily glammy and — arguably — glibly glitzy pad has expansive open-plan living spaces that include a leviathan living room where a 54-foot wide wall of curved glass glides open and disappears into the walls at the touch of a button. Marketing materials, press releases and previous discussions of the suped-up spread reveal the house has an 18-foot long onyx dining table that seats 24, two boutique-style walk-in closets in the master suite, a subterranean garage that doubles as a private car museum, both vodka and tequila bars, a candy room and three 90-inch televisionsets plus an 18-seat tiered screening room.
The outdoor living and recreation spaces that hug the mansion’s rear flank seem far more scant in scale than the house itself, but the relative compactness of the backyard doesn’t impinge or infringe on its purposeful decadence. At the center of the slender yard there’s a pond-sized infinity edge swimming pool with integrated spa and a multi-lounger tanning shelf. The pool is flanked to the north by a shaded terrace with a built-in barbecue station off the kitchen and, on the other side, a minimalist superstructure that defines a grassy lounge area decked out with a ping-pong table.
Only time will tell how much time Mister Persson will spend in deep domestic bliss with his new manse in Beverly Hills, but the unapologetic cynic in this property gossip would not be the least bit agog if, sometime in the next 18 months, Mister Persson let a few of L.A.’s top-notch real estate superstars know he might be willing to part with his high-octane Trousdale Estates real estate toy for the right price. Stranger things have happened in real estate, children. Stranger things have most certainly happened.
By: Variety
