For those who recognize "90210" as one of the world’s most prestigious zip codes, consider this listing that hit global headlines over the weekend.
A piece of land on a mountain in Beverly Hills, with incredible views overlooking the whole of Los Angeles, has been deemed likely the world’s most-expensive-ever property listing, at US$1 billion. That’s $1,305,030,000 in Canadian dollars at the current exchange rate as of July 30.
And for that price, you don’t even get a giant mansion – just the land.
However, the property is absolutely vast – 157 acres, which is bigger than California’s Disneyland. And it’s within the globally revered 90210 zip code, just 10 minutes up the hill from world-famous shopping on Rodeo Drive.
Known as The Mountain of Beverly Hills, the property has no house on it, but it has private roads, a security wall and sprinkler-fed lawns and trees. There’s also a paved, floodlit area with fountains designed to be a sculpture garden.
It makes sense to market the property with no house because, most importantly, the land comes with permission to build nearly 1.5 million square feet of living space across multiple buildings, according to the New York Times. So there’s plenty of scope for a developer to buy and subdivide the land and build, let’s say, 30 mansions, each on five acres.
Whether any developer thinks that there’s a profit to be made, with that initial $1 billion land cost, remains to be seen.
