The highest-priced Californian house ever sold was recently bought for $210 million. Neither a prominent celebrity nor a tech tycoon owned the mansion.
The billionaire creator of the well-known sportswear and eyewear company Oakley, James Jannard, sold his Malibu residence in one of the year’s largest real estate transactions. The Los Angeles Times broke the story first.
The buyer is concealed by a Delaware LLC, and the house was never listed on the market; nonetheless, Kurt Rappaport, the real estate broker handling the transaction, has previously sold properties to Lebron James, Tom Cruise, and Larry Ellison. Regarding the sale, Rappaport opted not to comment.
The eyeglasses tycoon, who paid $75 million for the 9.5-acre coastal estate in 2012, makes a tidy profit. Once deemed “too grandiose,” the eight-bedroom, fourteen-bathroom estate had its square footage decreased to “suit the homeowner’s desire for restraint.”
Image: Los-Angeles Times
The previous record for California real estate belonged to Beyonce and Jay-Z, the famous couple who paid $200 million in cash in 2023 for a 30,000-square-foot Malibu property. Bill Bell Jr., an heir to the soap opera fortune, was the seller. His parents created popular shows like “Another World,” “The Young and the Restless,” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
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Prior to it, the record was $177 million, which Rappaport helped to arrange and was also set in Malibu. Fashion mogul Serge Azria had sold that house to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen of the Bay Area.
Sprawling mansions dot Malibu’s landscape, and the wealthiest residents of the Bay Area, including celebrities, have snapped up the most expensive properties there.
After paying $165 million for the Warner house in Beverly Hills in 2020, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, previously owned the record in California real estate. The record was set in 2019 when Lachlan Murdoch paid $150 million for the “Beverly Hillbillies” house in Bel-Air.