Ye, formerly Kanye West, slashed the price of his Malibu mansion by around $14 million

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• It's located right on the beach. Any resident would be steps from the ocean.
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• Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos Got Married 28 Years Ago Today & Their Recreated Wedding Photos Are Too Cute
• West is selling the property for $53 million — $4 million less than he paid in 2021.
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Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, whose brokerage holds the listing, tells PEOPLE the rapper removed the home’s interiors, so the asking price reflects the cost of installing new finishes. The contractor also claims he was fired after he declined, at West’s request, to replace the home’s electrical system with one he deemed unsafe. The original construction of the home required 1,200 tons of concrete, 200 tons of steel, and 12 pylons driven 60 feet deep into the ground, according to the Oppenheim Group. However, Oppenheim told the Chronicle that a crew had been working on the property to prepare it to sell.

It's located right on the beach. Any resident would be steps from the ocean.

Another, soon, will belong to his ex-wife Kim Kardashian; a few weeks after she filed papers to scrub “West” off her name, she flew to visit the architect, who finalized the design of a “spaceship style” mansion she’s building in Palm Springs. The reality star was trying to spin the sale in any direction he could to People, knowing that West’s construction customization wasn’t going to entice a lot of buyers. “This architect is known for his concrete work, which is what remains,” Oppenheimer explained.

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Everything That's Happened With Kanye West's Abandoned Malibu Mansion - Forbes

Everything That's Happened With Kanye West's Abandoned Malibu Mansion.

Posted: Fri, 19 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

It will be interesting to see what sale price the oceanfront property eventually commands—particularly because it sits cheek-to-jowl next to other homes, nearly all of which are worth a mere fraction of West’s $53 million sticker. But this home does benefit from its unique pedigree; it’s one of the few stateside residences ever designed by Ando, who has become one of the billionaire elite’s most sought-after architects. Both California properties are gone and going, respectively — that Hidden Hills house was recently sold at a six-figure loss, while the Malibu manor is now up for grabs at $53 million. Even in the unlikely event of a full-price offer, West stands to lose many millions of dollars on the property, once realtor fees and closing costs have been factored into the equation. And it’s not even clear if he ever spent a night at the house, which was completely gutted during his ownership.

Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos Got Married 28 Years Ago Today & Their Recreated Wedding Photos Are Too Cute

Beginning in the mid-aughts, Sachs spent millions, and seven years of planning and construction, to build a hulking three-story house that more closely resembles a military-grade bunker than it does an ordinary home. The structure reportedly required 1,200 tons of poured concrete, 200 tons of steel reinforcement and 12 pylons driven 60 feet into the ground, supporting the monstrously heavy house from sinking into the sand. The listing notes that the home is constructed of approximately 1,200 tons of concrete, 200 tons of steel reinforcement and 12 “massive” pylons driven more than 60 feet into the sand. AD100 architecture firm Marmol Radziner served as executive architect and general contractor.

And for easy commuting, the house is only about 30 minutes by car—via twisting mountain roads—to the massive Hidden Hills compound built by West and estranged wife Kim Kardashian, a property that remains occupied by Kardashian and the couple’s children. It doesn’t appear West has a mortgage on the property, which is certainly pricey but all in a proverbial day’s work for the music and fashion mogul. Forbes says he’s worth $1.8 billion, and with the current success of his “Donda” album and continued reign of the Yeezy apparel brand, it’s not hard to foresee that number continuing to swell.

The Malibu Beach area of Los Angeles is one of the most expensive real estate areas in the state of California. However, Kanye West is finding it difficult to offload his oceanside mansion for a very understandable reason — it’s currently uninhabitable. Surprisingly, no one seems to want to buy a $53 million home that is missing windows, doors and electricity. The property hasn’t been sold despite sitting on the market for five months. He told TMZ that he wasn’t worried that the home was completely gutted because it would give the new owners a blank canvas.

According to Realtor.com, the rapper, music producer, and fashion mogul has slashed the price of the behemoth beachfront abode, which was designed by Japanese starchitect Tadao Ando. The price tag for the pad has been cut from $53 million to $39 million—a discount of over 26 percent. West gutted the entire place, but never wrapped up renovations on the home, which is missing all of its doors, windows plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and interior finishes. In 2021, Kanye West paid $57.25 for a chunk of prime Malibu real estate designed by Tadao Ando, a Pritzker-winning Japanese architect. There are only about 20 of Ando’s boxy concrete homes in the U.S., and one that sold to Jay-Z and Beyoncé this year set a California record.

Almost immediately after he bought it, West set about tearing the place apart, ripping out all the windows, doors and interior finishes. The formerly four-bedroom, five-bath house is now a vacant and uninhabitable concrete shell, with its rooms open and exposed to the unforgivingly corrosive sea air. West’s only saving grace at this point might be a developer, who has a budget and a vision, because it’s unlikely that any average buyer would want to tackle this costly and lengthy renovation project. We also feel sorry for the neighbors who have endured this eyesore for years, and who will have to deal with massive construction at some point.

Jason Oppenheim Got the Kanye Listing

To be fair, Ye's issues have always been there but the Malibu mansion could've stayed pretty. Let's take a trip through time, back to when Ye purchased the house, to witness it decline over the past few years, dovetailing neatly with Ye's public reputation (and, depending on how you feel about his recent music, his career). Kanye West's $57 million Malibu mansion is a pretty good metaphor for Kanye himself. Like the man now known as Ye, the Tadao Ando-designed beachside house was once imminently likeable, the epitome of artistic ingenuity. Obviously, this means the 4,000 square ft home can get a total transformation ... As it won't come with the rapper's favored minimalistic aesthetics, but it currently sticks out like a sore thumb, nestled among the other coastal properties.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, West was already facing a loss when he officially listed the property (with celebrity agent Jason Oppenheim of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, no less) on January 8. In an off-market deal in 2021, the ex-husband of reality star Kim Kardashian paid Richard Sachs (Ashley Olsen’s ex) $57 million for the roughly 4,000-square-foot mansion. Ye wanted to completely gut the Malibu mansion—removing fixtures, windows, doors, plumbing, and electrical systems—but that renovation vision “never materialized,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He halted the project in November, according to The Daily Mail, after closing his building company, Yeezy Construction Inc., due to financial struggles. Billionaire media mogul and proprietor Rupert Murdoch earlier this month had to slash the price of his Manhattan penthouse nearly 40% to $38.5 million.

Despite the big price reduction, buyers should be warned that the house will require many months and likely millions of dollars in renovation costs. And the current $39 million ask, while substantially improved, is a lofty figure. Other homes along this same stretch of sand typically top out around $20 million—and that’s for a brand-new or freshly rehabbed residence. Less than a month after the release of his long-awaited album, “Donda,” Kanye West paid $57 million for a Tadao Ando-designed Malibu beach house, which first listed in May 2020.

It’s worth noting that the current ask is a staggering $18 million less than what West himself paid for the place less than three years ago, back in September 2021. The music mogul-turned-Yeezy fashion designer shelled out $57.3 million—in cash—for the 4,000 square foot residence, which was completed circa 2013 and designed by famed Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The rapper, entrepreneur and aspiring architect and developer bought the 4,000-square-foot concrete home at Malibu Road in an off-market deal with owner Richard Sachs, according to Dirt. The controversial rapper originally purchased the property, which was designed by legendary Japanese architect Tadao Ando, in 2021 for $57 million, Architectural Digest reported at the time. Even the wealthiest of buyers are facing a housing market in which prices continue to skyrocket. Indeed, the price of typical luxury homes jumped nearly 9% since the start of the year—making them the most expensive they’ve ever been.

In 2021, Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and his wife Jen Rubio dropped $40 million to buy a Tom Ford’s Ands-designed New Mexico ranch. There are no photos of the interiors, but the décor is described as minimalist “yet warm” by Marmol Raziner, an L.A.-based architecture firm that built the house with Ando. Ando — famed for his museum structures built on the Japanese island of Naoshima — has designed precious few houses in the United States. One, built by art collectors and producers Bill and Maria Bell, was famously purchased by Jay-Z and Beyoncé this year for $200 million, setting a record as the most expensive residential real estate deal ever recorded in California.

“It will take several million dollars for the house to be finished,” Selling Sunset star and listing agent Jason Oppenheim of the Oppenheim Group told The Wall Street Journal. The gutted estate, which the 46-year-old rapper bought for a whopping $57 million in 2021, doesn’t have much curbside appeal for any buyer right now because it’s a concrete shell of a structure. He originally put the property on the market for $53 million in January, willing to take that $4 million hit, but no one was biting at that price. Now, according to TMZ which has the before-and-after photos, West has drastically dropped the price by $14 million — his home could be yours for only $39 million, but it doesn’t have any walls or decor… or anything. But it remains unclear if West ever spent a night at the oceanfront home, which sits cheek-to-jowl between two other houses on surfer-friendly Malibu Road.