By Dolores Quintana
The mansion that was hyped as one of the biggest, most expensive and most luxurious in the world sold for a quarter of its list price. The One mega-mansion was originally listed for sale at auction for $500 million but sold to an unnamed buyer for a paltry $126 million as reported by The Real Deal.com and The Wall Street Journal.
Located in one of Los Angeles’ most exclusive neighborhoods, Bel Air, at 944 Airole Way, the mansion was the talk of the real estate market for years. It is a 105,000-square-foot mansion built on four acres of land. The estate was supposed to come with such amenities as a jellyfish aquarium, a casino that would be designed to look like the ones you might find in Monaco and an infinity pool that would stretch 180 feet.
The development’s ambition fell victim to cost overages and setbacks which led to an investor filing a foreclosure suit. The developer Nile Niami decided to file for bankruptcy in an attempt to save his investment. The bankruptcy filing from Niami’s company Crestlloyd revealed that while they considered the value of the property to be $325 million, the project’s financial liabilities were around $190 million.
It was around this time that the developer dropped these wild ideas and decided to add a “philanthropy wing” to the home, but the development already had a 30 car garage, 20 bedrooms, five swimming pools, a beauty salon, a bowling alley and a gym. That list isn’t even every amenity that the estate has, by the way.
When the auction was finally held, only five interested buyers were there to bid. The new owner is from Los Angeles and considers the estate “an investment”. Since the mansion was sold without a certificate of occupancy, the buyer will have to spend a lot of money to complete the building and get the permits to allow people to occupy it.
We know this because the building was inspected by Vertex, a construction consulting firm, in 2021, the company found a number of architectural planning issues in the home’s design and permit issues.
The One actually comes in third place in the ranking of the most expensive homes in the United States. The most expensive was an apartment in Manhattan at 220 Central Park South, in an area known as Billionaire’s Row in 2019 and the apartment sold for about $238 million. Number two on the list was an estate in Malibu which sold for $177 million.
