Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has sold his controversial Malibu, California, house — for less than half the price he paid.
The rapper and producer purchased the 4,000-square-foot beachfront estate for $57.25 million in 2021, just years after it was built in 2013, according to data on CoStar’s Homes.com. The house was listed in January for $53 million. By April, that price was slashed to $39 million.
Homes.com data shows that the property went under contract on July 25. That deal was finalized Thursday. The sale price was $21 million — 60% beneath the property’s original listing price but higher than the buyer’s original offer of $20 million.
It marks the end of a yearslong saga after Ye gutted the house and stripped its entire interior, a move that garnered significant media attention, and critique, because of the property’s architectural history.
The house was designed by architect Tadao Ando who is known for his “minimalist structures and his assured use of reinforced concrete,” according to the Homes.com listing. Ando is also behind the record-breaking $200 million mansion purchased by musicians Beyonce and Jay-Z in 2023.
“Currently all interior finishes have been removed from the property, and work is needed to either restore or reimagine the interiors,” listing agent Jason Oppenheim wrote in the property’s listing on Home’s.com.
“It was not a project for the faint of heart,” he told CoStar News in an interview.
Restoration project
But that wasn’t a problem for buyer Bo Belmont, the founder and CEO of Belwood Investments, a company that buys fix-and-flip properties using crowdfunding.
Now, Belmont is working with agents Jean-Baptiste Rugiero and Mehdi Maamri of The Agency. The team plans to “take that property back to its original condition and resell it,” Rugiero told CoStar News in an interview.
“It's like a bunker. It's just solid concrete and steel,” David Contreras, a spokesperson for Belwood, told CoStar News. “It's just mainly sort of like the surface finishes that were removed, including the flooring, all the electrical appliances, and all of the kitchen and bathroom appliances have all been removed. So the restoration isn't as difficult as it seems.”
Rugiero said the team has already been in touch with Seattle-based architecture firm Marmol Radzinor, which oversaw the construction of the house under Ando’s supervision. The team is already working to prepare some contractors to “make sure we rebuild the house exactly the way it was,” he said.
The reconstruction will likely cost about $8 million, according to Contreras, but the team will also offer the property as is to investors who may be interested in taking on the refurbishment project. Whether they sell it now or after restoration, the team believes they will get the same return on their investment.
“If we can release it before, then it's even better,” Contreras said. “You don't do any work and the headache of going to the restoration process, because there's a lot of unique materials that are used in this property that aren't easily available. So it could become complicated, but it's something we're actually quite excited to do, if necessary.”
'Like a Picasso'
The listing gained attention again earlier this month when it was featured on the Netflix reality show, "Selling Sunset."
The show follows the Oppenheim Group, a brokerage founded by Jason and his twin brother, Brett Oppenheim. Episodes center on agents at the brokerage as they try to sell luxury properties throughout the Los Angeles area.
In the season finale of the show’s most recent season that aired earlier this month, Jason Oppenheim announced to the team that he had been tasked with selling the property, explaining that the house had no doors, no windows, no heating and air conditioning system, no plumbing, and no electrical wiring.
“It’s like a Picasso,” Oppenheim told his team of agents.
“What you need to do is just bring in an architect and designer to do the finishes,” he said in the episode. “If we can sell this house, we can obviously sell anything.”
Oppenheim told CoStar News that the sale required “a ton of due diligence.” Once the team was ready to bring the listing to buyers though, there was significant interest.
“Most of them were people who appreciated Tadao Ando's work. Very wealthy, obviously, a considerable number of billionaires,” he said. “Most people were interested in fixing the property up and reselling it. Some, a couple of people, I think, were actually interested for themselves.”