Luxury Living: a $70 million Beverly Hills house with a nightclub, and nine more
Ten homes on the market this week: five picks from the most expensive new US listings, led by a $70 million Beverly Hills house with its own nightclub, and five from abroad, including what may be Australia's biggest private home and a castle where Henry VIII is said to have stayed.
The US five come from Realtor.com's list of the week's most expensive homes, published on November 3. The international five were all listed or reported in the past two weeks. Asking prices are what the sellers and agents are asking, not what anyone has paid.
United States
1181 N Hillcrest Road, Beverly Hills, California
Asking $70 million, this is the most expensive new listing in the country this week. It sits at the top of Hillcrest Road in Trousdale Estates, the stretch locals call Billionaires Row, on close to an acre with views from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific. The spec developer Bruce Makowsky built it, and Realtor.com reports that it is said to be owned by Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of Minecraft, who bought it for $70 million in 2014. At this price he would roughly break even.
Inside there are eight bedrooms and 15 bathrooms, a private elevator, a recording studio with a drum room, a screening room, a wine cellar and staff quarters. There is also a nightclub with a DJ booth, a dance floor, a bar and club-grade sound. It comes furnished or unfurnished.
8 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, about 1 acre. Listing agent: Aaron Kirman, Christie's AKG.
Photo: Christie's International Real Estate SoCal
614 Tarpon Way, Palm Beach, Florida
Known as Tarpon Point, this Mediterranean compound in Palm Beach's Estate Section sits on a half-acre lot with water on two sides, giving it 295 feet of frontage on the Intracoastal. The 8,607-square-foot house has six bedrooms, a curved staircase, a chef's kitchen with a butler's pantry and a primary suite with two baths and two dressing rooms. There is a one-bedroom guest suite, a heated pool and spa, a three-car garage and a dock with a boat lift.
$43.5 million. 6 bedrooms, 8,607 sq ft, 295 ft of water frontage. Listing agent: Fern M. Fodiman, Sotheby's International Realty.
Photo: Realtor.com
Castletop Ranch, Spicewood, Texas
West of Austin on the Pedernales River, Castletop Ranch covers 273 acres. The main house is 14,400 square feet, with a dining room walled in floor-to-ceiling glass and a two-story kitchen with a loft above. Around it are two guesthouses, a game house, two staff homes, barns, a workshop, a tennis court, a gun range and a helipad, plus more than five miles of golf-cart trails, a private cove and year-round springs.
$41 million. 273 acres, 14,400 sq ft main house. Listing agent: Robert A. Dullnig, Kuper Sotheby's International Realty.
Photo: Realtor.com
Drift House, Jackson, Wyoming
Drift House is a four-bedroom log home designed by the architect Vince Lee and built in 1999 on 42.6 acres in the Solitude enclave outside Jackson. It has five private ponds, views of the Tetons and direct access to the Snake River, which is the point of the place for anyone who fly-fishes. The 8,060-square-foot house has an elevated great room over the river, a kitchen with a cathedral ceiling and exposed beams, a wraparound deck and a guest suite with its own entrance.
$37.5 million. 4 bedrooms, 8,060 sq ft, 42.6 acres. Listing agent: Latham Jenkins, Live Water Properties.
Photo: Realtor.com
Aman New York Residences, Fifth Avenue
Aman's residences occupy the upper 20 floors of the Crown Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. This 3,707-square-foot, three-bedroom penthouse looks over Central Park and Billionaires' Row and has a private terrace, a media room and a heated infinity pool. The monthly association fee is $15,689, which buys access to the building's piano bar, cigar bar, wine library and spa.
$35 million. 3 bedrooms, 3,707 sq ft. Listing agent: Amie Buchanan, Aman Property DE.
Photo: Realtor.com
The rest of the world
Le Palais, Dural, Sydney
Le Palais has close to 4,000 square metres of enclosed floor space, which realestate.com.au says makes it Sydney's largest private home and probably Australia's. That is more than 16 times the size of the average new Australian house. The developer Sid Nassif and his family bought the 2.02-hectare site in 2013 for A$1.75 million. The house has 11 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, five commercial kitchens, five bars, a cinema, a 100-square-metre gym, a hair salon and a three-bedroom guest house inside the main building. Outside are a pool with a swim-up bar, and tennis and basketball courts. The suburb record is A$16.5 million.
Price guide A$41 million to A$45 million. 11 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms. Agent: Ken Jacobs, Forbes Global Properties.
Photo: realestate.com.au
Penthouse Nacre, Le Provençal, Cap d'Antibes
Le Provençal was designed in 1926 as a grand hotel for the American millionaire Frank Jay Gould. Its guests included Hemingway and, in 1938 and 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy's family, John and Robert among them. The developer John Caudwell bought the long-closed hotel in 2014 and has turned it into 35 residences. Penthouse Nacre, a former VIP suite, is a triplex on the eighth to tenth floors, with six bedrooms in nearly 9,000 square feet and 3,825 square feet of terraces, one with a 39-foot pool. It has a 1971 cocktail bar by Willy Rizzo and a cinema.
€40 million, furnishings sold separately. 6 bedrooms, about 9,000 sq ft.
Photo: Robb Report
Allington Castle, Kent, England
Allington Castle stands on 42 acres beside the River Medway, about an hour southeast of London. The estate appears in the Domesday Book, and the present castle dates to the 12th century. Henry VIII is said to have stayed in its Royal Room. Sir Robert Worcester, the American-born founder of the polling firm MORI, bought it in a poor state in 1996 and spent nearly 30 years restoring it. He died last year at 91. The castle has six towers, two inner courtyards, a full moat, a jousting yard, a secret staircase, more than a dozen bedrooms and nine separate lodgings on the estate.
£5 million (about $6.7 million). 42 acres. Agent: Knight Frank.
Photo: Robb Report
Newington House, Oxfordshire, England
Country Life calls Newington House a 17th-century palazzo in unspoilt Oxfordshire. It has 10 bedrooms on 42 acres, with panelled rooms, French wallpaper murals, parquet floors and carved marble fireplaces. The grounds are a full country estate: equestrian facilities, woodland, paddocks, a lake, a walled garden, a rose garden, a croquet lawn, a pool and a tennis court.
£11.95 million. 10 bedrooms, 42 acres. Agent: Savills.
Photo: Country Life
Holbeck Ghyll, Windermere, Lake District
This one is a business as well as a house. Holbeck Ghyll is a country-house hotel above Windermere with eight acres, 24 suites in the main house and five more cottages, annexes and lodges, all looking down the lake. It suits a buyer who wants to run a hotel in the Lake District, or one with a very large family.
£8.5 million. 24 suites in the main house, eight acres. Agent: Strutt & Parker.
Photo: Country Life
What the list says
Six of the ten homes on Realtor.com's list this week are in Florida, two of them in Palm Beach. The top of the list, though, is a resale: the most expensive new listing in the country is a 2014 purchase being offered at the price it was bought for.
Abroad, the story is history and scale. Two English houses with centuries behind them cost less than half of Penthouse Nacre, while the Sydney house is a new build priced on size alone. If Le Palais sells within its guide, it will set a suburb record about two and a half times the old one.
Luxury Living runs every Tuesday. Listings change and sell, so check each one with its agent.
