UPDATED, Feb. 12, 3:20 p.m.: Jeff Bezos and David Geffen hammered out the Amazon chief’s record-setting $165 million purchase of Geffen’s Beverly Hills estate while socializing on the former music mogul’s famous yacht, the Rising Sun, sources tell The Real Deal.
The deal was done directly, according to a source, and it did not involve real estate agents on either side.
The pair of billionaires made a good match. Geffen had been quietly shopping the home for 2.5 years, according to one source. And Bezos was actively shopping for Los Angeles mansions in the nine-figure range in the last few weeks, looking for a home for himself and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.
Along with purchasing the Geffen estate, the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal, also reported that the world’s richest man — with a net worth of nearly $132 billion, according to Forbes — has also bought an additional plot of nearby land for $90 million from the estate of the late Paul Allen.
The nine-acre Geffen estate was designed in the 1930s for Jack Warner, the former president of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Geffen, the founder of Geffen Records and an early investor in Apple, purchased the estate for $47.5 million in 1990, then a record for Los Angeles County.
Bezos’s $165 million price tag is a new record for Los Angeles County and for that matter the state of California, shattering the mark set in December when Lachlan Murdoch bought the Chartwell Estate in Bel Air for $150 million.
Indeed, Los Angeles luxury homebuyers have engaged in a game of “can you top this?” the last several months, starting with when an unidentified purchaser plucked up the former Spelling Manor in Beverly Hills fo $120 million.
Next to go could be “Casa Encantada,” the Bel Air Country Club adjacent estate that is asking $225 million. A listing agent on the property Jeff Hyland, of Hilton & Hyland, is bullish that the property could sell for north of $165 million within the next few weeks given the upturn in the ultra-luxury market.
“The Geffen sale will really help the high-end,” Hyland said.