Would you give me your phone number?’ a friendly assistant called Victoria asks me. ‘Just in case we lose each other.’
Given that she’s about to take me on a house tour, you might think she’s being over dramatic. But this is no ordinary house.
The white marble and gleaming glass behemoth situated on a Los Angeles hillside, of which I’m being given an exclusive tour, is a whopping 105,000 sq ft and goes up for auction later this month with a starting price of $295 million (£217 million).
Designed over the course of a decade, it’s the most expensive house in America. Its original asking price of $500 million (£368 million) saw it hold the title of the world’s fourth most expensive house, before dropping to seventh at its current price (Buckingham Palace holds top spot).
For context, the primary bedroom alone is 5,500 sq ft; more than three times the size of Boris and Carrie’s Downing Street flat.
Inside there are 21 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms and a host of over-the-top features such as a nightclub, wellness centre, bowling alley and a 40-seat cinema.
Perched high above swanky Bel Air, gazing out to the Pacific and downtown LA, it’s a house that literally looks down on its smaller neighbours. Jennifer Aniston’s 8,500 sq ft mid-century home, Clint Eastwood’s elegant 14,219 sq ft mansion and Beyonce’s 30,000 sq ft digs are all minnows compared wtih the property dubbed The One.
But who on earth can afford this kind of place? ‘There are about 3,890 billionaires in the world, so this property is for a very limited audience,’ admits Hollywood realtor Rayni Williams. ‘But that’s what it was built for and who it’s intended for.’
‘I like to call it a private resort, and it’s for someone with a large entourage,’ adds her husband and business partner, Branden.
‘We sell a lot of $50 million or $100 million homes and the owners say they never have enough parking, they never have enough staff quarters or big enough motor courts.
‘There’s always something lacking and they try to buy their neighbour’s house to suit their needs. But this house addresses all those issues. There’s nothing like it.’ Certainly, as I enter the foyer, it’s hard not to gasp at the sheer size and scale of the property. With windows stretching to the 26ft high ceiling, the entrance is flooded with light and there’s a soothing trickle from one of the house’s many water features.
There’s also a giant rotating sculpture called Unity by contemporary artist Mike Fields (although, I note, nowhere I can see to hang my coat). There are too many rooms to count but they are all decorated in a neutral palette, which manages to keep the house feeling cohesive despite its scale.
Downstairs is largely given over to entertainment and leisure facilities. There’s an indoor swimming pool — one of five pools — a four-lane bowling alley, a golf simulator, billiards table and cocktail bar.
There’s a Candy Room, stocked with all kinds of sweets, that you can pick up before you sit down to watch a film in the state-of-the-art Dolby Digital cinema.
There’s a nightclub with a DJ booth and a VIP area, accessible from the street, so partygoers don’t have to tramp through the house.
The wellness centre features a sauna, steam room and showers, a Jacuzzi, plunge pool and two massage rooms. Then there’s the eight-seater juice bar, gym, yoga area and a private outdoor running track set up around the perimeter of the property.
There’s also a full-service beauty salon, decorated in lacquered red and gold, with two mani-pedi, three hair-washing and three hair-styling stations.
I poke my head around the door of the garage, which accommodates 30-plus cars, with two turntables. Heaven forbid anyone would have to do their own three-point turn.
On the ground floor there are multiple elegant living rooms, a two-storey office and several dining rooms. There are multiple gleaming kitchens, including a restaurant-style kitchen for an in-house chef — not to mention a 10,000-bottle, temperature-controlled wine cellar and a cigar lounge decorated with vintage Playboy covers.
On the top floor, there’s the aforementioned 5,500 sq ft master bedroom, with a king-size bed that looks like a single because of the room’s grand scale. There’s yet another kitchen within the suite, a stunning bathroom in muted grey, a library and seating area.
A switch brings out a giant TV concealed in a side wall. Then there’s a magnificent walk-in wardrobe that makes Carrie’s closet in Sex And The City look like a mere cupboard. There are miles of shelves for Chanel handbags and Jimmy Choo stilettos, drawers for jewellery and enough hanging space for even the most clothes-obsessed woman. It’s beautifully lit, decorated in pinks and oranges and is so fabulous I could happily sleep in there.
The magic of The One seems to be getting to me because I find myself thinking: ‘This is actually all quite liveable.’ Time to get back to reality.
The One was a decade in the making and, as befits a project as extravagant as this, has a convoluted history. The house, originally touted as the ‘largest and most expensive urban property in the world,’ was conceived by film producer turned developer Nile Niami and designed by LA architect Paul McClean.
Niami, a brash and colourful entrepreneur, shaved 40ft off the hillside, removing 30,000 cubic metres of dirt, to level the site.
He spent years bringing the extravagant contemporary house to fruition, borrowing tens of millions of dollars to finance the grandiose project.
The mega mansion went into receivership last year with more than $165 million owed in defaulted loans, debt and unpaid taxes. The property now faces a court-ordered sale to recoup the money owed to lenders.
Los Angeles has also limited the construction of new mega-mansions, which means nothing like The One can be built again.
Rayni and Branden say they have been showing prospective buyers around the property regularly, and already have three offers on the table ahead of the auction. The designer and diamond-clad husband-and-wife duo, who have sold homes to celebrities such as Bruce Willis, Jennifer Lopez and Bridget Fonda, are among Hollywood’s top brokers, with more than $9 billion in sales to date. They run their business from an office in West Hollywood that is decorated like a private club, featuring an in-house barista and various crystals.
‘Citrine is wonderful for real estate because it has properties signifying abundance and wealth, and we have amethyst and rose quartz for protection and serenity,’ Rayni explains.
Her husband claims The One will be a good investment. ‘It’s like owning a one-of-a-kind Picasso,’ he says. ‘It will never be done again and its value will only go up over time.’
The couple are marketing the property with another top LA realtor, Aaron Kirman, who has been making stops in Paris and London to see prospective buyers.
‘There aren’t that many people who can afford this house, so its about targeting those billionaires who want to be in LA, who want a modern house of this size and honing in on that and then going point to point, person to person,’ he says.
For high-worth individuals, a property such as The One will simply be one of their many homes. Aaron says the average billionaire has five to nine properties around the world. ‘For us, a $300 million house is a lot of money, but for some people, when you have anywhere between five billion and hundreds of billions, that’s quite an ordinary house. The One has everything because you never need to leave. That’s what billionaires want right now: the safety, the protection of an all-encompassing compound.’
I had expected The One to be a gaudy palace, but it’s more tasteful than I had imagined.
My head was temporarily turned by luxury amenities, not to mention the jaw-dropping views of the Pacific Ocean, downtown LA and the San Gabriel mountains.
Its high perch means you can see as far as 150 miles into the distance. Quite frankly, the location cannot be beaten.
The sale by the high-end Concierge Auctions house starts on February 28 and runs for four days. To weed out time-wasters, prospective buyers must put down a deposit of $250,000 to enter a bid.
But only a few would want a house as big as The One, which would require a full staff to run.
Already I’m worrying about who is going to change all the light bulbs in this massive house. But maybe that’s not something billionaires think about.
