USD$250m house for sale in Los Angeles
American housing developer Bruce Makowksy has designed and listed a Los Angeles home which he thinks is worth USD$250m. That makes it easily the most expensive house in the USA and beats the previous record of USD$147m by a large margin.
The house has 12 bedrooms, 21 bathrooms, five bars and a massage studio alongside other distractions such as an infinity pool, an indoor cinema and 130 separate art installations.
Makowsky believes he has found a niche by designing homes which only billionaires can afford and describes the Bel Air property as “the most spectacular house in the United States.”
“Spectacular” is one word for it. Other suitable words are things like “excessive,” “outrageous,” or “obscene.” The house was designed and built without having a buyer lined up and surely represents a bit of a risk considering that there are not too many billionaires in the world.
However, given how the super-rich operate, it is unlikely that a buyer will not eventually be found for this “modern day Xanadu.”
Whether it should have been built in the first place is another question, of course. The issue of worldwide inequality has been becoming more desperate in recent years and this new Bel Air mansion makes a good claim to represent the gaping wealth gap in microcosm.
Los Angeles is a city where homelessness is rife, with more than 43,000 people living on the streets. It is doubtful that the idea of a new palace for one of the richest people on earth – 8 of whom have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world combined – is much comfort to those suffering in poverty.
Makowsky somewhat laughably claims that building houses such as this is his way of “unleash some of the wealth that the super-wealthy have.” How that is achieved by locking up USD$250m in a single piece of fancy land is an unexplained mystery. Judging Makowsky’s motives is a matter for each individual to make their own mind up on, but claiming some sort of attempt at wealth redistribution seems farfetched at best.
Photo copyright: Bruce Makowsky/ BAM Luxury Development
