Photo: Bellocqimages/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty Images
The Tadao Ando–designed Malibu beach house that Kanye West, now known as Ye, nearly destroyed is already back on the market. West purchased the architectural masterpiece from banker Richard Sachs for $57.25 million in 2021 before gutting it, ripping out the electrical and plumbing, and leaving it exposed to sun, surf, and pranksters who swathed the garage in Hanukkah decorations. The “ruin” eventually sold last September for a mere $21 million to house-flipping crowdfunding entrepreneur Steven “Bo” Belmont, who raised funds to buy and restore the house to its original condition. He’s now listing it for $39 million.
The concrete house, considered an architectural treasure, is located on the Malibu beach, steps from the water, as shown in listing photos.
The beachfront property now has plumbing, electrical, and a new roof. Its rooms have also been framed out. Glass for the windows, arriving from Germany, is expected to be installed by the end of the summer, according to The Wall Street Journal. All of this is being overseen by architecture firm Marmol Radziner, which worked on the original build, and is costing an estimated $8.5 million.
So why sell now? Belmont told the Journal that the house’s carrying costs are approximately $1 million a month, and the sooner he can sell it, the more of a profit he’ll turn for his investors. It also helps that the Malibu market, owing to limited inventory after the L.A. wildfires, is hot right now (and this house, being concrete, has natural fireproofing). If the house doesn’t sell now, Belmont says he’ll be asking significantly more closer to completion — $55 to $65 million. He claims he’s already had offers on the property from other builders and developers in the range of $28 to $30 million, which apparently emboldened him to ask for even more. Of course, buying midway through the renovation also offers the chance for a buyer to put their mark on the house before it’s completely finished (though hopefully less of a mark than its previous owner left). Or, as Jason Oppenheim of the Oppenheim Group, one of the listing agents, told the Journal, “This house is like a Picasso. This is almost like allowing the buyer to pick the frame.”
The home, as shown in listing photos, was known for its stunning sightlines. The investor who bought it hired the original U.S. architecture firm that worked with Tadao Ando to restore it to its pre-Ye state.
Photo: The Oppenheim Group
The house before Ye demo’d the interior, as shown in listing photos. Renovation is expected to be completed early next year. The home now has a new roof, electrical, plumbing, and framing.
Photo: B) Roger Davies 2012
At this stage, there seems to be quite a bit of interior renovation work left — Belmont doesn’t expect the project to be done until early next year. As he told the Los Angeles Times early on, he planned to restore the home “as though Kanye was never there.” During the two years West owned the home, in his attempt to turn the 4,000-square-foot home into an off-the-grid bunker, he instructed a local worker to paint over marble and cabinetry so that it blended in with the concrete structure and the rest of the house, to replace the stairs with ramps or slides, and to rip out interior details and stunning sight lines whose construction Ando painstakingly oversaw, as reported by The New Yorker. The worker eventually sued West after allegedly incurring health problems as a result of working 16-hour days and sleeping in the roofless shell of a house.
Belmont is apparently looking to focus his money and efforts on another notorious L.A. celebrity home — P.Diddy’s mansion, last listed for $61.5 million. He offered $30 million for it in November, but the offer was rejected. Undaunted, he has since lowered his bid to $27.5 million.