The most expensive house in America and the most expensive villa in Dubai | Beautiful House | Finance

Casa Encantada is a 3,700 square meter house located in Los Angeles. It was twice sold for the most expensive house in the US in 1980 and 2000. And now, the villa is on sale again with a new record, surpassing the $238 million penthouse on the Central Park South building in New York.

Built in the 1930s and completed in 1938, the Bel-Air estate covers approximately 3.4 hectares. It was originally the residence of widow Hilda Boldt Weber, wife of the famous glass manufacturer of the time, Mr. Charles Boldt.

Front of the villa.

According to Jeffrey Hyland's book "The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hill," Mrs. Weber was despised by the Los Angeles elite for being a nouveau riche. So after inheriting $150 million in 1929 from her late husband, she used a quarter of her fortune to build Casa Encantada to assert her upper-class status.

At the time of the housewarming, guests had never seen a villa like Casa Encantada, according to Hyland. The villa’s entrance on Bellagio Road opens onto a gently sloping, curving driveway that winds through lawns and leads to a large courtyard with a fountain.

The building has 40 rooms, including three kitchens, or 60 if you include the servants' quarters. The rooms are paneled in rare woods like English sycamore and black walnut, and decorated with 18th-century French paintings, antique clocks, and centuries-old Chinese porcelain.

Panoramic view of the villa from the back and above. Video : WSJ

Weber sold the house in 1950 to hotel magnate Conrad Hilton for $225,000. Hilton lived in Casa Encantada until his death in 1979. The mansion was sold to billionaire David Murdock, chairman of the Dole Food Company, for $12.4 million in 1980.

See more photos of Casa Encantada:

The villa is set between large gardens and a two-hole golf course.

Lawn and garden around the pool area.

Villa pool area at night.

Room for sitting and chatting.

Casa Encantada’s current owners are financier Gary Winnick and his wife, who bought the property for $94 million in 2000. Winnick said he first visited the property in 1988 to attend a fundraising luncheon Murdock hosted for President George H.W. Bush.

Driving through the gates of the estate, he was surprised to see a property of this size in Los Angeles. “I never thought I’d buy it 10 years later,” he said. It wasn’t until Murdock invited him back about a decade later, with the intention of selling it, that he really took notice. Winnick said the mansion was so large that he was tired after touring it all.

“I appreciate the craftsmanship and sophistication that went into the construction of the house. This is not the kind of house you can call an interior designer to decorate. It requires a completely different mindset,” Winnick shared.

After buying it from Hilton, Winnick sold all the original furniture from the house. He hired designer Peter Marino to redo the interior over a period of two and a half years, with 250 workers on site every day.

The study is decorated with a portrait of George Washington.

Winnick decorated the home with a valuable art collection, including works by Edward Hopper and Cy Twombly. The study features a portrait of George Washington commissioned by Benjamin Franklin. The Winnicks say the aesthetic upgrades, as well as the installation of new heating, cooling, plumbing and electrical systems, cost tens of millions of dollars.

After living in the mansion for 20 years, the Winnicks have been considering selling Casa Encantada for several years. He asked an agent to market it for $225 million in 2019, but never officially listed it. There were a few interested buyers at the time, but he wasn’t ready to sell.

The family is now ready to move in. He noted that the owner would need a staff to care for the villa and the grounds, which include several silk trees that attract macaws at certain times of the year. The grounds also include a two-hole golf course and a tunnel underneath.

Back view and backyard of the villa.

Rappaport, the agent who handled the sale, said there are few homes in the United States that can compare to Casa Encantada. Some notable examples include the Chartwell estate in Los Angeles, which Univision billionaire Jerry Perenchio sold for $150 million in 2019 to News Corp. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch. Or the Beverly Hills estate that Jeff Bezos bought from David Geffen for $165 million in 2020.

“These types of properties only come along once every few decades,” the agent said.

The Los Angeles luxury real estate market has slowed in recent months as a new transfer tax has hit the segment. But mega-deals are still happening regularly. Last month, artists Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid around $200 million for a Malibu estate. “Ultra-high-end real estate is its own world ,” Rappaport added.

Dubai's most expensive villa costs 204 million USD

Dubai’s most expensive home for sale sits on a 6,500-square-foot plot in Emirates Hills, overlooking a golf course. The house has a floor area of ​​nearly 5,600 square feet but only five bedrooms. The master bedroom is 370 square feet, larger than the total area of ​​most normal homes.

The dining room and recreation room are on the ground floor. Other amenities include a 15-car garage, indoor and outdoor pools, a 70,000-liter indoor live reef aquarium, koi ponds, a transformer station and emergency rooms.

Front of the villa.

Owned by a local real estate developer, the mansion is nicknamed the “Marble Palace” for its Italian marble and is estimated to be worth between $22 million and $27 million. Construction took nearly 12 years and was completed in 2018, according to Luxhabitat Sotheby’s International Realty, which is handling the sale.

The interior of the house is covered in 700,000 sheets of gold leaf, which took 70 skilled workers over nine months to create. The house is also decorated with about 400 works from the owner's art collection, mainly 19th and 20th century statues and paintings. The brokerage firm said the owner is willing to negotiate a sale that includes or excludes the collection.

Kunal Singh, a broker at Luxhabitat Sotheby's, said he expected buyers to either love or hate the property. "It doesn't suit everyone's taste or style," he said.

The main hall of the villa has a grand staircase and a handcrafted glass dome, with gold-plated interior details.

Dubai’s property market has been booming since late 2020, after six years of decline. Its response to Covid-19 helped Dubai reopen quickly, attracting financiers relocating from places like Singapore and Hong Kong. Wealthy people from around the world bought property here as a way to park their money during the global economic turmoil. Meanwhile, wealthy Russians poured in after the conflict in Ukraine broke out, helping to sustain the boom.

Some recent big deals include a sandbar sale for $34 million and a penthouse sale for $5.4 million. In the Emirates Hills area alone, the most expensive home ever sold was for $57.2 million in August 2022.

Only one property in Dubai can compete with this villa in terms of price. That is the penthouse at the Bugatti by Binghatti project, which is on the market for $204 million but has not yet been built. The apartment, or "sky villa" as the developer calls it, is expected to be completed in the next 3 years and has its own elevator for cars.

According to Kunal Singh, the "Marble Palace" has only about 5 to 10 potential buyers in the world, because they must be wealthy enough but interested in the design style of the house. There have been 2 customers who have come to see the house in the past 3 weeks. One of them is from Uzbekistan, who must find a way to transfer money to Dubai to buy. Another customer is from India, who already owns 3 properties in Emirates Hills. The obstacle for this customer is that his wife objects because she wants to buy another house with a more modern style.

"This is something you would buy to show off, to invite some elite people, leaders, politicians," said Kerry Michael, marketing director of Luxhabitat Sotheby's. According to him, the clients are likely to be politicians, leaders. The reason is that they need a place to entertain high-class and private guests. That is something that cannot be done on Palm Jumeirah, a man-made archipelago famous for its lavish real estate.

See more photos of the villa:

A coral reef tank that has been cared for for 18 months.

An indoor swimming pool of the villa.

A space to display artwork collected by the homeowner.

Source: https://diaoc.nld.com.vn/nha-dep/can-nha-dat-nhat-nuoc-my-va-biet-thu-dat-nhat-dubai-20230703123248291.htm