Unique Properties
The Ultimate Sales
$100 million & $221 million sales set records
By Publisher Rick Goodwin
The spring selling got off to a rather high-profile start when a number of news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post, reported the sale of an 18-acre hilltop estate in Los Altos Hills, Calif., for the staggering sum of $100 million (pictured here), the highest-known price paid for a single-family home in the United States. That beats the previous record — Donald Trump’s sale of an oceanfront mansion on Palm Beach’s “Billionaire’s Row” for $95 million back in 2008.
The buyer is Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, founder of Digital Sky Technologies and an investor in such ventures as Facebook, Groupon and Zynga. (For the record, the buyer in the Trump deal was also a Russian billionaire.) For his $100 million, Milner gets an approximately 25,500-square-foot main residence by noted architect William Hablinski modeled after an 18th-century French chateau, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts and a tennis pavilion, grand formal areas for entertaining, a theater, the requisite wine cellar and home spa/gym, and multiple living areas set on the second floor to take advantage of the San Francisco Bay views.
Also, news broke at press time that the $221 million sale at One Hyde Park in London (pictured left) finally closed. We first reported on this deal in August 2010, though at the time the buyer’s identity was unknown. Now we know. According to Forbes, the new owner is billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man. This sale is being touted as the most expensive apartment sale ever.
Are these sales a sign that things are coming back stronger in the luxury real estate market than has been suggested by recent reports in the press? Probably not. While sales of this magnitude generate a lot of attention and keep real estate blogs humming for weeks on end, the fact is that deals such as these are one-off events with little or no relevance to the overall market. And, given that mega-home sales are often all-cash affairs, it is worth noting that the Los Altos deal carries an interesting sidebar: The sellers, ESS Technology founder Fred Chan and his wife, Annie, agreed to hold a $50 million note on the estate for the buyer. Now that is one heck of a jumbo loan!
Florida’s “Water Flower” Sells for $15.5 Million
By Jessica Decina
It has been on our Ultimate List since 2008; it was on our front cover in 2009; and it was the winner of our Ultimate Pool/Outdoor Entertainment Space contest in 2010. As we commemorate our Ultimate Homes issue, it only seems appropriate to take note of the sale of Acqua Liana, the captivating oceanfront home in Manalapan Beach, Fla., known best for its many water-inspired features and amenities.
“Unequivocally, Acqua Liana represents the most magnificent oceanfront estate home that I have created in my 25-year career as a real estate artist. The buyer now owns the crown jewel of the Palm Beach oceanfront real estate market,” says Frank McKinney, who designed the seven-bedroom, 11-bath estate.
For those of you who don’t remember some of the features that give Acqua Liana (Tahitian and Fijian words for “water flower”) its namesake, this residence offers more than 15,000 square feet of aqua-inspired design, including a water floor with hand-painted tiles, water walls, an impressive wet bar aquarium, swimmable waterfalls, a fire spa and fabulous oceanfront view.
One of the first luxury homes to be certified “green” by the United States Green Building Council, Acqua Liana boasts solar panels as well as energy-efficient appliances and lighting that reduce energy consumption by approximately 60 percent. As McKinney puts it, “I don’t think it will be possible to outdo Acqua Liana.”
Listed by Premier Estate Properties’ Pascal Ligouri for $29 million initially and dropping to $22.9 million in 2010, the home sold last September for $15.5 million to BALI 620 Realty Trust, according to The Palm Beach Daily News.
[...] Just earlier this year, a Los Altos Hills, Calif., home sold for $100 million, the highest known price ever paid for a single-family home in the United States. This could top that, but we’ll have to wait to see if the sale closes. Some high-profile sales in the past year have fallen through, so we’ll keep an eye out for reports of this actually closing, and we’ll pass it along as soon as we hear anything. [...]
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