You know Los Angeles real estate is getting expensive when Jay Z and Beyonce are getting outbid.
News that Jay Z and Beyonce have purchased a 30,000-square-foot mansion in LA's Bel Air neighborhood for $88 million highlighted just how wealthy the music superstars have become. But their purchase followed a three-year house-hunting saga in which JayBey were repeatedly outbid by even richer buyers or faced prices that were beyond their comfort level.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the power couple is getting a mortgage of $52.8 million for their $88 million purchase of a newly built, 30,000-square-foot mansion. The deal is the most expensive home sale of the year in LA, topping an $85 million sale in Malibu. Forbes recently declared the couple as billionaires, with a net worth of $1.16 billion.
Their purchase is the most expensive of the year so far, topping designer Tom Ford's $85 million deal this spring. Yet the deal is far more than they planned to spend two years ago and signals the rise of LA as the nation's new capital of hyper-priced real estate, blowing past Manhattan.
Jay Z and Beyonce's first effort to buy a home in LA was foiled by a newly minted tech billionaire. According to people familiar with the talks, the couple made a bid on a 23,000-square-foot home in Beverly Hills built by luxury builder Bruce Makowsky. The home had a massive living room with a 54-foot retractable wall of glass, an infinity pool overlooking all of LA, a car gallery, and a state-of-the-art home theater with a door covered in lizard skin.
Jay Z and Beyonce toured the home multiple times and made an offer. But before the deal could be finalized, they were outbid by Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft. After selling his company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, Persson purchased the home for $70 million, marking a record at the time for Beverly Hills.
Last year, the couple tried again — this time bidding a reported $49 million for a 10-bedroom traditional home in Beverly Hills. But designer Tom Ford bid $50 million and they were out of luck again.
The couple toured many of the newly built homes around Bel Air and Beverly Hills. But they couldn't agree on price or a property.
Finally, they discovered the ultra-mod home built on Cuesta Way in Bel Air and started negotiations. Initial reports had the couple bidding $120 million, but then the reported price came down to $90 million and finally $88 million.
The LA Times reports that the couple took out a $52 million mortgage to buy the home. At current rates for a 30-year fixed, that would work out to monthly payments of more than $250,000. That's still less than the reported $400,000 a month the couple was reportedly paying to rent in Malibu.
Their purchase adds to the shine around high-end real estate in LA. There are now more eight listings or pocket-listings priced at $100 million or more in LA, according to Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel Appraisers and Consultants. There are currently no official listings in Manhattan for nine figures, although several developers are quietly planning or shopping around new penthouses that could reach $100 million or more.
The average price of a single family home in Beverly Hills has nearly doubled over the past year, to $5.5 million. The average sales price in Bel Air and Holmby Hills is up 13 percent to $5.3 million.
"LA is becoming the preeminent luxury real estate destination in the world," said Aaron Kirman, a leading luxury real-estate broker in LA. "It's the combination of incredible projects by top developers, the mix of Europeans and Asians coming to LA and money from the East Coast, as well as the great lifestyle here and some cocky real-estate agents. It surpasses any market in the world right now."
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