Malibu

Four months ago, Kanye West put his infamously wrecked Malibu house on the market, asking a steep $53 million. To nobody’s particular surprise, there were no takers. This week, the price tag was slashed all the way down to $39 million by the home’s listing agent, Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim.

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.

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. 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.

Shortly after buying the house in 2021, West tore out all the furnishings and fixtures, leaving it a concrete shell.

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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.

Still, those other homes lack a Tadao Ando pedigree. West’s Brutalist white elephant remains one of only a handful of U.S. buildings designed by the 82-year-old, who’s been called “Hollywood’s favorite starchitect” and whose homes are “the hottest must-have[s] among the super wealthy.”

Last year, Jay-Z and Beyoncé paid $190 million for a different—and substantially larger—Malibu estate designed by Ando, an amount that remains the most ever paid for a California home. Kim Kardashian is planning to built an extravagant Ando-designed vacation mansion near Palm Springs. 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.

West, who remains one of the world’s most successful record producers and one of the best-selling musicians of all time, seems to be shifting away from real estate ownership—when he’s not out traveling the globe with wife Bianca Censori, he frequently bunks up for months at a time in some of L.A.’s poshest hotels, including the oceanfront Nobu Ryokan. More

In a beach town where home prices have topped $170 million on more than one occasion, It’s rare to find 1.5 acres of contiguous oceanfront land available to buy at an affordable price. But Jeff T. Green, the tech investor who was at one point Utah’s richest man, has indeed done just that. Records indicate the 46-year-old CEO of The Trade Desk was the buyer who recently scooped up a significant property in the far western reaches of Malibu.

Of course, “affordable” is a relative term in this case. Green’s little splurge set him back about $12.3 million, certainly a huge sum of money but nothing out of the ordinary as Malibu beachfront prices go. For that chunk of change, Green received two side-by-side properties: one of them a 0.28-acre parcel with a 5,000-square-foot house, and the vacant lot immediately next door, which spans about 1.2 acres.

Green—who sports a net worth of $4.6 billion, per Forbes—actually closed on the two-parcel estate at the tail end of 2022, although the transactions were not reported at that time. Since then, he has not moved into his new beachfront estate; the existing house, a large but dated modern-style structure built in the early 1990s, appears to be undergoing a big renovation. It’s still unclear what Green plans to do with the empty lot next door, which could easily accommodate an oceanfront mansion all on its own.

Sited behind gates and greenery, the 1990s house and the vacant lot next door together span some 1.5 oceanfront acres.

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Long owned by a non-famous businesswoman from Chicago, the current structure appears to be mostly unchanged since it was completed in ’93. Tucked behind gates, the notably boxy, tri-level residence will wow guests with its three-story foyer. There are beige stone floors throughout, plus numerous sets of sliding glass doors that spill out onto ocean-view terraces.

Other highlights include a mostly all-white kitchen with tile floors and premium SubZero and Wolf appliances, plus a main level bedroom with ensuite bathroom. The home’s three family bedrooms are located on the second floor, including the spacious primary suite. Also on the second floor lies a separate but in-house apartment complete with a living room, fireplace, kitchenette, full bath, and separate entrance with a balcony just outside. This space would be ideal for a live-in staff member, or for an extended family member, guests or as a deluxe work-from-home office space.

But the home’s third floor is what really impresses. Up there is a big sunroom, plus a 2,000-square-foot, open-air rooftop deck with stunning views for miles up and down the scenic Malibu coastline. And while some naysayers may decry this home’s location as being “too far” from the bustle and shopping destinations of Malibu’s downtown area, it should be noted that this area is far less crowded than downtown Malibu, and Green’s estate is blessed with more than 180 feet of sandy beach frontage.

Green’s Thousand Oaks main residence, which he bought from Britney Spears in 2017.

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Green, who appears to have split from wife Lynette a few years back, continues to maintain a main residence in Thousand Oaks, where in 2017 he paid Britney Spears $7 million for a sprawling Spanish-style estate behind the guarded gates of the exclusive Sherwood Country Club. More

Famed Malibu architect Harry Gesner died in summer 2022, just weeks after his 97th birthday. To say Gesner led a colorful life would be putting it mildly; the word “epic” is probably be more apt. Born in Southern California to an engineer father and an artist mother, he was flying planes by age 14. At 19, he stormed the beach at Normandy; after the war, he first worked as a waterski instructor in Lake Arrowhead before turning down an invitation from Frank Lloyd Wright to study at Wright’s Taliesin architecture school in favor of being a tomb raider in Ecuador. Along the way, he famously dated numerous models and actresses, fraternized with Errol Flynn and Marlon Brando, collected fancy sports cars and surfed every day into his late eighties.

Gesner designed many homes all over California, but his best-known works are found on the shores of his beloved and adopted hometown of Malibu. Among them are the iconic Wave House, designed for one of the architect’s surfing buddies with a copper-scale-topped roofline that resembles a series of cresting waves.

Next door to Wave House is Gesner’s own longtime family abode, which he called Sandcastle. Completed in 1974, it is a testament to Gesner’s commitment to sustainable building practices. Among the salvaged materials used for its construction are old telephone poles, wall panels made from aqueduct pipes, birdseye maple from a high school gym, marble from public baths that were about to be demolished, old-growth redwood harvested in the 1800s, and windows and doors saved from one of Hollywood’s silent film theaters.

First listed last year at $27.5 million, the oceanfront house has just sold for a heavily slashed $13.5 million. The discount-minded buyer is tech entrepreneur Jason Fried—co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, a multibillion-dollar project management firm, and a noted architecture enthusiast. Last year, Fried dropped $26 million on an especially glorious old estate in the California’s Carmel Highlands neighborhood.

At the Sandcastle home’s entry is a library/lounge with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and ocean views. From here, one proceeds to the heart of the house, a commodious, window-wrapped living/dining room featuring massive spoke-like beams, wood-plank ceilings, and a vast brick fireplace at its hub. Modeled after the Hollywood Bowl, the fireplace and its large polished concrete hearth served as a stage for Gesner’s wife, actress Nan Martin.

Echoing the cylindrical shape of the house itself, the kitchen wraps around a circular island and has tile countertops, stained glass lunettes fitted into the beams overhead, a fireplace, updated appliances, a breakfast bar, and a walk-in pantry. Adjacent to the dining area is a solarium with stained glass panels, beyond which lies the wraparound deck.

The home’s main level also contains two en-suite bedrooms, one with built-ins making it suitable for use as an office. Upstairs is the primary suite tower, featuring lofty ceilings, a brick fireplace, eyebrow windows, a sitting area with ocean view, and a spiral staircase with handmade driftwood treads corkscrewing up to a studio/loft/meditation space.

Additional structures on the .73-acre property include a “tree house” apartment with kitchenette, living room/dining area, bedroom, bath, and wraparound deck; a “boat house” with a full kitchen, ocean-view living/dining room with a built-in table and porthole windows; and another one-bedroom apartment “nest” with ocean view and stained glass above an indoor/outdoor cabana. There’s also a three-car garage with additional parking pad.

Along with 122 feet of beachfront, exterior amenities include a covered deck, a brick patio, a lawn, an outdoor shower, surfboard and other storage areas, a staircase to the beach, and multiple vantage points from which to enjoy glorious sunset views. More

After roughly six months on the market amid declining asking prices that began at $18.5 million and ultimately and gradually fell to just under $17 million, CSI creator Anthony Zuiker has managed to sell his oceanfront home in Malibu, records indicate. The Broad Beach-adjacent estate went for about $15.3 million to Jay Brown, the brash Roc Nation co-founder and CEO who oversees the careers of some of music’s most notable talents, among them Jay-Z, Rihanna and Alicia Keys.

Zuiker, 55, acquired the property about five years ago from NBA superstar Kevin Durant, paying about $12.2 million. But with extravagant homes in many other in many other cities—Las Vegas, Lake Arrowhead and Montecito, just to name a few—the Las Vegas native and his wife Michelle ultimately did not end up using their oceanfront vacation pad as much as they originally anticipated.

Cleaved to a steep slope along a postcard-ready cove at the end of a private, gated cul-de-sac, the slightly more than 5,100-square-foot contemporary has four bedrooms, six bathrooms and four fireplaces over spread three floors serviced by an elevator. Spare, modern and relaxed with premium-quality finishes, light-filled interior spaces feature wide plank French oak floorboards, vast expanses of art-friendly white walls and vaulted ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling glass panels slide open to unite the house with three levels of decks with ocean, coastline and sunset views.

Under a massive skylight, the main living room has a minimalist, raised hearth fireplace set into a hand-burnished plaster wall while the adjoining dining room is completely open to an all-white kitchen expensively fitted with designer-grade appliances and Calacatta marble counter tops that waterfall over one end of a center island. The residence’s wide variety of other living and entertaining spaces include a cozy den, a home theater, a library, a lofted massage and exercise studio and a media lounge complete with a full kitchen, showy, glass-fronted wine cellar and direct access to an outdoor dining terrace with a private staircase to the beach.

In addition to their new Malibu getaway, Brown and his longtime wife Kawanna continue to maintain a spacious, Mediterranean-styled home in the upper reaches of L.A.’s Bel Air neighborhood. They also own a high-floor condo in one of the many high-rise buildings that dot L.A.’s always-bustling Wilshire Corridor area near Century City. More