UPDATED Monday 12/18, 10:00 p.m.: Malibu wasn’t quite ready for a nine-figure sale.
A record-smashing pending deal of Kurt Rappaport’s mansion to a Canadian billionaire may be in peril, sources told The Real Deal. Earlier this month, news broke that Rappaport, the co-founder and CEO of Beverly Hills-based Westside Estate Agency, struck a deal to sell his 15,000-square-foot Malibu mansion to Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz for $120 million – $85 million for the property and $35 million for the spoils inside it.
But now insiders are whispering that the off-market deal with Katz may be off. Representatives for Katz didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Rappaport couldn’t be reached.
A Carbon Beach compound on Pacific Coast Highway, which was owned by David Geffen and sold to Guggenheim Partners founder Mark Walter in May for $85 million, holds the current record for Malibu. The main home on the property spanned 6,130 square feet, putting the price at $13,866 per square foot. Rappaport, incidentally, brokered that transaction.
If the deal for Rappaport’s home does indeed fall through, it would provide a measure of vindication for many top-shelf brokers who said the $120 million price tag, at $8,000 a foot, defied common sense. Rappaport paid just $6.8 million for the land in 2007, property records show, and tapped architect Scott Mitchell to design the home, which boasts seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms and what is said to be the longest infinity pool in California.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Rappaport’s property as a ‘spec mansion.’