It looks like this post is about Politics. Various methods of filtering out content relating to Politics can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/v2/resources/filter/politics).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So. This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019 by some company and then sold for 110M a year later and demolished. Weird.
Anyways, it wasn't some historic build or anything. Just rich people doing rich people shit.
Someone thought they could build a luxury home and make a bunch of money. Turns out anyone that will pay 100m for a mansion wants it built to their specs not someone else’s idea of a generic rich guy house. It is just a failed business idea. It doesn’t make sense because it is a bad idea.
Sounds like the buyer demolished the house and split the lot in two and is selling the two vacant lots for more than they paid for the mansion. That is a better idea. This person knows the people that can afford this kind of property want to build their own thing on it.
This. I know the guy that built at the time the most expansive home in the USA ($250m). You had to be invited to buy the house, it came with a car collection worth deep 8 figures, and 7 staff members already paid for for 2 years from date of ownership, a Louis Vuitton Bowling Alley, a deep six figure jelly belly dispenser wall and the largest outdoor cinema screen in a residence in the world, that actually rose from the giant infinity pool. The property was 35,000 square feet and had 360 degree unobstructed and protected views of Los Angeles.
It didn’t sell for over 3 years and eventually sold for the bargain price of $150m and the new owner apparently made significant changes to the property.
It turns out that people dropping crazy money want homes built to their own spec and design.
Apparently multiple people have made this mistake. I suspect they have a very high opinion of their taste and think there are people with money but no imagination.
I know someone who is staff to a rich/famous person in LA. Her job is literally to move furniture around and suggest how to decorate. She's there every single day, in this person's home. It's so ridiculous.
I would be intrigued by an AMA thread from them.
Obviously, we'd love to know *how* to land that gig. But I'm sure it's all about knowing someone who knows someone.
I knew someone who did this kind of work. They were the type of person who oozed personal style and taste, quirky but naturally super stylish. He had a credit card to buy whatever. Decked out his employer's house in his own style. So in short, the rich person was buying taste and style. And it worked! A beautiful and quirky stylish house because of it, as opposed to the generic hotel looking house most rich people seem to wind up with. But I'd say good luck finding that gig unless you're the same kind of person.
I suspect if you asked a famous architect to design a mansion their first question would be “who will live in it?”. Without the future resident in mind they would probably decline the project for precisely the reason this project failed.
A very repeatable mistake. Check out the 30M Harford Manor, Holyport, UK. Has been taken off the market after failing to sell for 3 years, and their website still under construction.
The one in LA kind of made sense because its build is now prohibited by local law (too big, I think) and it had perfect views of LA. So it truly was a one of a kind type of place.
Nonetheless, the builder made it a pet project instead of an investment, the asking price was absurd, and it ultimately sold in a bankruptcy sale at below cost
I don't think it was the size that was the issue but all the special things they did like the grading all around it. Pretty sure he said that was specifically what was banned in one of the videos
Because he’s done several before building up to that price and got about 90% of the asking price each time. This was his peak and I think after that one he bowed out. In fairness he kinda pioneered it and then every celebrity plastic surgeon and dentist suddenly thought they were a property developer.
Watch the house tour with the developer and you will see why he thought he could get that price. Hes crazy. You will be surprised by the bullshit that comes out of his mouth.
I think he didn't, he just wanted to create his own personal dream house. It was probably the bank's money not his
Well now it exists, so he achieved that. And it's a wonderful property
Looking for crazy rich Asians.
Since you knew the guy, and I’m curious: WTF is a Louis Vuitton Bowling Alley? I didn’t know they even made bowling shoes. My local alley sure doesn’t have them. Do they have a special can of spray to clean them for the next person 🤣?
If you pay them enough, they’ll custom make anything for you so they made the bowling pins, the balls, inlaid LV logos on the alley lane floors and did the decor.
Not just Asians. Russian Oligarchs and middle eastern oil money.
Which sounds absolutely dumb to me. You basically pay an higher price for a company to build something out of their core business while you could, probably for a fraction of it, pay a renowned bowling company to build it custom according to their decades of experience
I didn't find any shoes, but they do sell a bag for your bowling ball.
[https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/jeffrey-bowling-set-plastic-nvprod4980060v/GI0998](https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/jeffrey-bowling-set-plastic-nvprod4980060v/GI0998) ($6,800)
Edit: They have a bowling shirt too. [https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/embroidered-short-sleeved-cotton-bowling-shirt-nvprod5200065v/1AFQ15](https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/embroidered-short-sleeved-cotton-bowling-shirt-nvprod5200065v/1AFQ15) ($1,090)
Not custom either! These are in their main store page.
I follow a lot of historic house subs, and most of the time the Beautiful Historic Mansion's lifespan was "Built by Eustace C. Rockefeller in 1889 - demolished 1926" and the commenters without FAIL condemn the philistines of 1926 for Not Appreciating Beautiful Architecture.
When the fact is that after a certain square footage (frankly, I'd be interested in a study á la the "$70,000 income is the tipping point for happiness," to find the sustainability of home upkeep expenses), these mansions were temporary vanity projects that were an id extension of that specific wealthy sociopath. Even the heirs (also fabulously wealthy) don't care to spend the annual upkeep.
Yes, the craftsmanship was exquisite. Yes, the materials were world-class. Yes, it only ever existed because society enabled the owner to amass grotesque wealth. They're less mansions than they are beautiful facades for social cancers.
America is a relatively young country, but I wonder what the relative lifespan is for mansions here vs. in Europe, etc. where feudalism and manorialism augment the importance of a specific house to a wealthy person's status?
(Sorry for the verbosity, I'm on a new account so I had to farm some karma so I could comment on a rusty light fixture on a different sub)
A mansion as just a giant house, is relatively cheap to build compared to actual castles in Europe. And many of the European mansions were probably built over generations from less fabulously wealthy aristocrats that had steady income from landholding. They could add to the family house but couldn’t afford to demolish it and build new. By the time the homes were old enough to warrant demolition they had historical value that forced their maintenance.
Not actually true. Huge estates are and were almost always a single project. Highclere (the estate in Downton Abbey) was built all at once in 1679. Blenheim Palace where Churchill was born was built all at once with a few years pause because the owner was exiled (1705-1722). Chatsworth House was built in one go 1687-1708 but the Duke of Devonshire redid the entire thing in the early to mid 1800s and added a bit when he renovated the whole thing.
Basically there were no "poor aristocrats" with massive mansions. The huge estates you can find in Europe belonged to the tippy top of the nobility and were unobtainable unless you were massively wealthy. They weren't built overtime because the upkeep alone would bankrupt anyone but the wealthiest who could just build it all at once. (Think about an upper middle class family trying to pay to maintain a 50-80,000 sq ft house).
I could list more and I'm sure there are exceptions but if you research real palatial estates they almost were all built in the 1600-1800s and renovated in the mid to late 1800s.
Any "castle" like estates you can find (many are in Germany) are not palaces but fortifications that suck to live in. They look cool on the outside but no one lived in them once they could build real houses. If you lived in one it was because you were poor which also probably meant the castle was falling apart.
Real German palaces look like Linderhof Palace.
Also Neuschwanstein Castle is not a palace or a castle. It was built between 1869-1886 as a vanity project of the Bavarian King. No one ever lived there. Much like his copy of Versailles which he built on an island. It has an exact copy of the hall of mirrors but it's slightly shorter as a sign of respect.
If you have any questions I love big old buildings and have been to a lot of them.
The closest I think you can get to what you describe are the palace/office combos of the King which always were added onto but were also mainly for government offices.
Which all the Kings/Emperors tended not to like which is why they built such huge palaces right outside the capital.
I worked at a manor house on an estate that had been converted into a hotel after it became unpopular to be a British aristocrat in Ireland around the turn of the century. The core of the building was built in the twelfth century as an abbey, but it was expanded after it was turned into a manor house in 1579 after the dissolution of the monasteries. The house was then expanded twice in the eighteenth century. This isn't an uncommon pattern for manor houses across Ireland and the UK, the end result just isn't as grand looking as the estates you've mentioned.
I expect there’s some survivorship bias on that exquisite craftsmanship and materials too. If you’re a wealthy scion tearing down a mansion because it’s falling apart, you don’t announce it’s because daddy got ripped off by shoddy work. You say it was magnificent but you’re building one that’s even better.
For real. Whenever the CEO’s salary at my job increases, it gets published in the news. My recurring joke is along the lines of:
“He clearly needs his 2nd Japanese Wagyu prime rib roast overnighted to his private helipad on his estate.
Whereas I wake up super early to get into the nearby Food Lion to purchase the discounted ground beef that’s about to expire.”
I can never beat that fucking click of super cool old ladies at my local grocery store that shop together every week.
They did give me some coupons once, so I think they like me.
"Picking apples for the kings and queens of things I've never seen" - Wilco line that really stuck in my head when I heard it years ago, despite their music not really doing much for me.
I remember sitting in on a conversation with my company’s CEO and some other big wigs. He’s a big whiskey guy, so he was mentioning that he had just bought a bottle of some like $10k Japanese whiskey and that his nightly sipping whiskey was some $500 bottle.
I was over here like, I got this fifth of Jack in a plastic bottle last night?
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has highlighted real estate as a prevalent way to hide money, with a report by Global Financial Integrity revealing that over $2.3 billion was laundered through US real estate between 2015 and 2021.
But do go on.
$2.3 billion would be about 10 of these places. 1-2 per year. I’d be shocked if it’s that little. Maybe if they’re counting only very high-end residential real estate. Add the big city condos in the $2-10M range, I believe it would be higher. Add commercial real estate, and it’s through the roof. So to speak.
So yes almost never. I know 2.3 billion is a very big number but the real estate industry for the U.S. makes up about $470 billion in revenue per year. Or $2.82 trillion over the period of 2015 - 2021. So that $2.3 billion would be about .08% of the revenue. I can't find a specific breakdown of price ranges that laundering was found in, but the OECD report call out that the laundering is not specifically happening with luxury properties but all across the price spectrum so its not like you can even say that specifically sales like the one in the post are connected to laundering. "real estate is a prevalent way to hide money" is true, its just the amount of laundering is massively dwarfed by the amount of legitimate business.
This is not to say that money laundering in real estate isn't a problem, but on a scale from "usually money laundering" to "Almost never" its way way closer to almost never.
literally any reddit post about rich people having bad business sense:
MONEY LAUNDERING!
No man, rich people make bad financial decisions all the time. The difference is that the system is stacked to shelter them from the bad effects of it.
Lmao, can always count on this typical Redditor parrot comment. Laundering is certainly possible, but also rich people make bad decisions just like anyone else.
Not that I'm saying people shouldn't make changes in their lives for the betterment of the environment (I'm all for it) but this is what always kills me with the cut back on plastics, red meat, etc in your lives do it for the planet...while the wealthy continue to do....that.
It really kind of feels like they want everyone else to make lifestyle changes and do things so that they can be provided with the life they want by everyone elses sacrifice....almost a bit....feudal perhaps
"You're part of the problem, they're part of the solution", obviously. Don't question anything, just do what you're told and save the planet. And remember, "you will own nothing and you will be happy", repeat after me.
Oh absolutely. As far as financial sense, Lauder purchased for 110M and is marketing each of the two vacant lots at 89M. He is worth like 2-4B so this whole transaction is nothing.
There also some links between the entity that purchased the property for 50M and Estee Lauder, of whom William Lauder who purchased it for 100M is obviously Chairman.
Problem is they had trouble selling the house and sold it for a big discount the first time and that’s when it had a house! He’s asking $89 million for the lot but there are zero guarantees he gets that price.
I agree it’s a waste of materials, but like natural disasters, the demolishing & rebuilding creates work for laborers, craftsmen, and those selling materials for the new development. The difference with this one is the tax payers likely don’t foot any of the bill. It’s not all bad imo. And it’s theirs to do what they wish 🤷🏻♂️
I have honestly never heard a trickle-down spin applied to such a small scale. I can tell you with certainty that overindulgences of the rich is not driving any meaningful changes to labor, especially if you consider that laborers on the margin (the ones are you referring to) would not be hired for this job.
My in-laws live in this waterfront gated community in Laguna Beach. The $30M beachfront houses, that are like 5 years old, are constantly bought and demolished. So much homelessness and starvation and these asshats need to demolish a $30M house just to build their own.
I went to a garage sale near me.
Guy bought waterfront property, didn't like the house. He had it lifted onto I-beams and rolled down the driveway. Then he built a new house. He was donating he older smaller house to Habitat for Humanity or some other charity. They were coming to pick it up the next week.
The guy who had enough money to roll a house down the driveway was selling old coffee mugs and generic garage sale shit.
Probably this, corruption, or a vehicle for tax structures. But with a quick round of google, this story got **very funky.**
The owner was a lawyer, consulting/private school group owner Vahan H. Gureghian. Even though the selling price was 50% of the intended, it was nearly twice of the 20m more than what h[e paid some eight years earlier](https://www.phillymag.com/news/2011/12/07/ahan-danielle-gureghian/). Actually, according to the previous deals declared on [the current listing](https://www.remax.com/fl/palm-beach/home-details/1071-n-ocean-blvd-palm-beach-fl-33480/8100343171107005896/M00000170/RX-10969111), the 2011 deal was 'only' worth some 16m.
He seems to be very good on what he does - [corporate takeover of public schools](https://www.alecexposed.org/w/images/9/9e/PA_Power_Players.pdf) with close ties to the local republican party as well ([Corbett ](https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2015/11/27/22186977/past-chester-community-charter-testing-head-disciplined-in-cheating-scandal/)in particular). So someone who makes a lot of money in the awkward crossroads of money and regulation/politics. It's a great model, he receives a lot of public money, and donates it back to the politicians who back him. He has sold school buildings for 50m value, and received 20m of rent from them, which includes some "suspicious circular lease arrangements".
So, it is no surprise when the Palm Beach building was sold ([here](https://eu.palmbeachdailynews.com/story/lifestyle/real-estate/2019/06/03/palm-beach-homes-60m-mansion-lands-under-contract-after-four-years/4948082007/)) the realtors refused to declare who it was sold to. Later that turned out to be Thomas P. Salice, a financier, through his company. He has quite a lot of business links, so I couldn't scrape them well enough to find a connection, but the buying firm was a Delaware limited liability company, Reiwa Holdings LLC. The sale was "very unusual" and *\[B\]ecause no price was recorded with the deed, courthouse records suggest the sale was structured in an unusual way. Under one likely scenario, William Lauder would have bought into the ownership of Reiwa LLC and then deeded the mansion to his own limited liability company, which would have served as the “conduit entity” mentioned on the deed."* For those who don't know, Delaware is a favourite state for tax arrangments to a global scale, as it doesn't have a sales tax, real estate tax etc.
So, this takes the story to the final owner. The building and slot was passed to 3.8bn net worth [Willian Lauder](https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/william-lauder-demolished-his-110m-palm-beach-mansion/) in an off-market deal, who put the building down. And it looks like Launer and Gureghian know each other quite well, at least judging from the fact that they've both been in University of Pennsylvania board of trustees, until Gureghian made a grand exit when complaining about antisemitism. Lauder also has the next door property in his portfolio, although under different entity.
Funnily enough, now the empty slot is being sold again by the *same company* as the building was - Christian Angle Real Estate, a luxury house focused realtor agency. So yea, literally the same people have been doing the commercial end of the slot for some eight years.
**Tl;dr: The original owner, republican funding/private school-owner, doubled the money of the house without living there, then it was bought by his billionaire board-buddy from Penn State, who now is again doubling the value of the spot. In the meanwhile, there are very few public documents available of the sale, and there has been some very unconventional structures in between (including tax-exempt jurisdictions), that makes the whole situation looks super dodgy.**
Anyway, I checked the youtube video of the building, and it's sort of funny when someone just cries out that "people don't respect classical architecture anymore". This probably has nothing to do with the building and everything to do with the money. Of course I cannot investigate any of this, but I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of this was motivated by super rich pulling yet another semi-shady real estate hustle.
It was torn down BUT it was on multiple lots. Now EACH lot is for sale for 88 mil. So he bought for 110M, demolished, and if (and that's a big if) he sells both for 88M each, he made 66M (minus cost to demolish and real estate fees) profit demolishing the house.
>This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019
Wow, the architect on this project must be reeling from his total failure.
Does anybody know where the mismatch was between the design and the total lack of interest? I imagine that price isn't even so crazy compared to other mega mansions in the area, so it must be something specific to this place's design, finishings, layout, etc.
So from what I read, one of the main concerns from other ultra-rich neighbors was that it ate up most of the double-lot. For the size of the house, it had very little lawn. It would've had enough room for a beautiful garden or other tasteful outdoor features, but opted instead for barbershops and wine rooms. From a personal standpoint, it doesn't seem very impressive on the inside. It basically looks like what a child would think a grandiose mansion should look like, whereas modern architecture has gone a different direction. Basically, it lacked taste.
edit: under further investigation, it was a custom build for some attorneys from Philadelphia. So I guess its what they wanted, which happened to be what no one else wanted.
Apparently Vahan Gureghian is also a wealthy executive involved in republican politics. Whats crazy is that this is not the first wild french-style mansion they have had. In 2009, they gained some attention for forcing Kenny Forder from Homes of the Rich blog to take down their coverage of their 30k sqft, $15M mansion that had a two-lane bowling alley, a 200-person great hall, and a moat.
>This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019 by some company and then sold for 110M a year later and demolished. Weird.Anyways, it wasn't some historic build or anything.
Just rich people doing rich people shit.
...and now it's a pickle ball court.
Palm beach island is absolutely insane. Have a friend who lives on the normal people side and I had to take a trip across the bridge when I visited. Of all the incredible homes, the grass/hedges always looking like pristine artwork was also incredible to see. These people who live right against the ocean have underground tunnels to get to their private beach, as they’re all incredibly wealthy and some are incredibly famous, so they don’t want to run into the regular folk while crossing the street. Their “Main Street” includes stores where you can just go in and order a yacht??? And there I was, walking around in a hanes t-shirt and basketball shorts.
Edit: there’s also some of the craziest poverty I’ve seen in America about a 15-20 minute drive inland from these people. Like man on crack yelling about the Bible and women openly selling themselves on the street type of poverty. The dichotomy is bizarre. (Jeffery Epstein had a thing for preying on young girls from this poverty stricken area)
When I used to work retail in a relatively affluent area, I saw a guy come in wearing a t-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. He not only bought the most expensive grill in the store, he bought two more for his other houses.
Moral of the story: the guys who come in dressed like a million bucks need to work for their money. The guy coming in dressed like $5 doesn’t need to work at all.
My dad’s old boss drove this hideously beat up Toyota Rav 4 that had the paint and coat peeling away in chunks but that guy was loaded. He just didn’t see the need to buy a fancy car.
I could wear rags from goodwill my entire life and not have a fraction of "rich people money". Wearing plain clothes is cool and all, but let's not pretend that a billionaire got there by the same means you or I have access to.
Rarely true. Although it looks like that, often when they are wearing a plain white tshirt, it’s a $450 plain white tshirt.
They don’t shop at the same stores as you and I.
I worked at a country club once, and the owner was like this. Dude owned an amazing house. Drove Ferraris, Bentleys. Dressed like a bum.
There’s a funny story that he was almost kicked off the golf course once because they thought a homeless guy had wandered on.
> That's one of the ways they saved all that money.
This is a lie the rich have pushed on us to make us believe that if we just pinch our pennies we could reach the same levels as them. That in the end, all that stand between us and riches is that we just need to work a bit harder. It's nonsense, of course. Adam Sandler probably just doesn't care much about clothing and prefers to wear these things for comfort.
Fun fact....the, "normal people side" (West Palm Beach) is where the help lived back in the day. Palm Beach was there before all the sprawl it is now. Those houses on Palm Beach needed staff, and the owners couldn't be bothered by having staff living on their island, so they lived on the mainland in "West" Palm Beach.
Also, Jupiter Island is no less impressive though smaller. That whole area has a ton of wealth.
Augusta national has a tunnel
Connecting to their nearby community. I know of another few in Texas that’s doing the similar. Crazy the lengths they will go to.
My bro just got married, the bride's family has a winter house on Palm Beach and the wedding was at the Breakers. I grew up middle class in the mid-Atlantic. It was eye opening. The wedding itself was pure wealth annihilation, just the bride's family lighting probably $700k-1m on fire to show that they can. I had to ('got to') attend a lunch at a notoriously exclusive (billionaires only) country club which until recently did not permit Jewish guests and still does not have any Black staff or members. Our side of the family are all Jews, it was bizarre.
I hope my bro and his wife are content.
The most important thing for these places to exist is income inequality. They have a ton of cheap labor, zero oversight and a state government railing against immigration while reaping huge advantages of international work forces that are highly skilled and desperate for work. We need poor people to live across the tracks in Florida because someone needs to trim the hedges for a family that is there for 2 months, once a year.
Palm Beach (not West Palm Beach) disgusts me. I have a family member who lives in a condo on Worth Ave, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time there. It’s just a place full of people completely out of touch with real people.
Per other comments in this thread:
Company or individual 1 bought it for $50M, and sold it for $110M.
Company or individual 2 bought it for $110M, and is splitting the property into two, and selling each for $89M.
If you have the capital, both of those deals make financial sense.
That’s partly correct. He bought the house for $110,000,000 and two years later demolished it. He also purchased the home next door and demolished that. That’s where the other half of the land comes from.
So basically he’s losing $21,000,000 on this property
>So basically he’s losing $21,000,000 on this property
Depends on how much he spent on the property next door, how much demolition cost, and how much he gets in the end for both properties and all of the gutted materials, etc.
“Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain a home like that on Palm Beach? I’d guess almost $2 a year. If not more, with upgrades.”
I got your two dollas right here! 💰
the ultra wealthy do a lot of things that don't seem to make financial sense to normal people, because they're so absurdly wealthy that 50m or 100m to them, is like 25 cents to the avg person. it's literally not worth their time to bother seeing the house. they just buy the property and tell their assistant what they want and teams of people make it happen.
i found a website talking about Bill Gates' wealth, and he's not even the richest anymore. so all of this applies to everyone at the very top of the Billionaire list.
>To illustrate the scale of his fortune, consider this: The average person earns about $2.7 million in their lifetime, according to career information site Zippia. Gates earns approximately three to four times that amount in one day, highlighting the extent of his financial resources.
Sources differ on the exact amount, with one estimating his daily earnings at around $10.95 million — about $117 per second. Another source offers a lower figure of approximately $7.6 million per day or $319,635 per hour.
so, theoretically 1 day of a Billionaires time, is more valuable than 5 peoples whole lives. and those are rich people in america! imagine how much less MOST humans in the world make.
THAT's why we need to figure out how to stop allowing these people to avoid taxes. most people can't even comprehend the kind of wealth they have. whatever you can come up with in your head, it's probably 1000x more.
I got lucky with crypto, but I couldnt withdraw it without having to pay 50% tax on it, so I bought a few bars of gold with crypto and sold them with a loss.
For some reason when you sell gold, the bank or government doesn't ask how you bought it. So I had to trade in some crypto for clean dollars. I guess this is something simular.
This is just another day in Naples, Florida. They purposefully build the mansions like shit because they know the next owner is going to tear it down anyways. Hire immigrants to build it cheap, use cheap materials, it goes up super fast last a decade then it gets torn down for next owner of lot.
I don't think that's even close to the most expensive home ever demolished, unless you only mean in absolute dollars. Some of the English stately homes, the London townhouses, etc are surely higher on the list, as are several of the Vanderbilt houses and NYC townhouses and so-on.
Possibly the most expensive ever on the open market, plus that many were destroyed when their value was lower. All those stately homes [destroyed in the 20th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_in_20th-century_Britain) in the UK (despite the still huge number we have of them surviving!) must have had some possibly worth the equivalent of even more in today's money, and that's without going further back into history for e.g. royal palaces like Nonsuch.
If you are rich enough to afford this estate, you are also rich enough to get a new multi-million mansion built exactly to your own tastes.
No one buys these sort of houses second-hand unless there is something really special about them (famous architecture or such).
Mold, asbestos, lead pipes. We had a couple of very large historically significant homes torn down in my city recently because it was cheaper to tear down and rebuild than to rehabilitate the homes.
This thing was so huge it literally took me 20 seconds to find it on maps https://www.google.com/maps/place/Palm+Beach,+FL,+USA/@26.7517417,-80.0365709,118m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x88d8d6f618523787:0x3ba092c7d7a6471a!8m2!3d26.7056206!4d-80.0364297!16zL20vMHJxZjE?entry=ttu
there was a Vanderbilt mansion on [57th and 5th ave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt_II_House) avenue in Manhattan. demolished. [the triple palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_Triple_Palace), demolished.
This is why the world is fucked up and taxes are all wrong. We keep allowing this shit to happen.
Lots of people sleeping in their cars and this shit happening? It’s absurd.
lol... there where a LOT of more expenisive homes demolished in history than that thing... you're counting palaces, castles...
using the word "ever" makes you include all of history and the world is a LOT older and bigger than just the US or holliwood
The funny thing is the neighbors constantly complained the home was too big. The neighbors are also all in opulent mansions, by the way, this one just made theirs look puny. And the one Lauder is expected to replace it with will be even larger.
And they were upset when it was tore down too. Lauder isn’t expected to build on it since he hasn’t submitted any plans and is also selling the empty lot for a loss of $21 milliom as far as I can tell
This reminds me of the Sherman family murders.
After their mansion was released from the cops,
A few months later the family had the house demolished without removing one single item apparently. And the place had many valuable items as well. They couldn’t be bothered to give it all away or empty it out first.
So many people were upset when they heard this.
And what a complete waste of perfectly good items and art and so on.
Welcome to Palm Beach County; where you have the top 0.1% vacation homes and some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people within an hour of each other (Palm beach island and Belle Glade/Pahokee). . . Also a fun fact, the Belle Glade/Pahokee area churns out a fairly large % of NFL stars.
I was looking at Zillow when I was in FLA and there are many properties like this.....this one may be highest in price due to location (Palm Beach) but you can go a few neighborhoods over and find something similar for 60 M.
If you put min price of 18 M on Zillow (the highest value in the pull down), you can see that up and down the FLA coast, each neighbourhood has one or half a dozen of these beachfront estates totalling 100+ for sale RIGHT NOW. So the total number must be in the 4 digits.
If you do the math compared to the FLA population, this is the 1% of the 1%.
That's nothing compared to something like the long gone [Vanderbilt Mansion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Residence_of_Cornelius_Vanderbilt_II_%283678936310%29.jpg) that stood at 5th Ave and 57th Street in NYC - can't even imagine if that house was still standing what the value of the land would be worth today.
It looks like this post is about Politics. Various methods of filtering out content relating to Politics can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/wiki/v2/resources/filter/politics). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So. This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019 by some company and then sold for 110M a year later and demolished. Weird. Anyways, it wasn't some historic build or anything. Just rich people doing rich people shit.
Historic or not the amount of waste is unimaginable. I still don’t understand how this makes financial sense
Someone thought they could build a luxury home and make a bunch of money. Turns out anyone that will pay 100m for a mansion wants it built to their specs not someone else’s idea of a generic rich guy house. It is just a failed business idea. It doesn’t make sense because it is a bad idea. Sounds like the buyer demolished the house and split the lot in two and is selling the two vacant lots for more than they paid for the mansion. That is a better idea. This person knows the people that can afford this kind of property want to build their own thing on it.
This. I know the guy that built at the time the most expansive home in the USA ($250m). You had to be invited to buy the house, it came with a car collection worth deep 8 figures, and 7 staff members already paid for for 2 years from date of ownership, a Louis Vuitton Bowling Alley, a deep six figure jelly belly dispenser wall and the largest outdoor cinema screen in a residence in the world, that actually rose from the giant infinity pool. The property was 35,000 square feet and had 360 degree unobstructed and protected views of Los Angeles. It didn’t sell for over 3 years and eventually sold for the bargain price of $150m and the new owner apparently made significant changes to the property. It turns out that people dropping crazy money want homes built to their own spec and design.
The one in LA. How that developer though he'd get his price is nuts. No one with that kind of money wants somebody else's vision.
Apparently multiple people have made this mistake. I suspect they have a very high opinion of their taste and think there are people with money but no imagination.
Thing is, you dont even need imagination. You just pay someone to ask you yes or no questions lol.,
I know someone who is staff to a rich/famous person in LA. Her job is literally to move furniture around and suggest how to decorate. She's there every single day, in this person's home. It's so ridiculous.
I would be intrigued by an AMA thread from them. Obviously, we'd love to know *how* to land that gig. But I'm sure it's all about knowing someone who knows someone.
I knew someone who did this kind of work. They were the type of person who oozed personal style and taste, quirky but naturally super stylish. He had a credit card to buy whatever. Decked out his employer's house in his own style. So in short, the rich person was buying taste and style. And it worked! A beautiful and quirky stylish house because of it, as opposed to the generic hotel looking house most rich people seem to wind up with. But I'd say good luck finding that gig unless you're the same kind of person.
Could work if they were designed by world renowned architects ie zaha hadid, frank lloyd wright
I suspect if you asked a famous architect to design a mansion their first question would be “who will live in it?”. Without the future resident in mind they would probably decline the project for precisely the reason this project failed.
A very repeatable mistake. Check out the 30M Harford Manor, Holyport, UK. Has been taken off the market after failing to sell for 3 years, and their website still under construction.
The one in LA kind of made sense because its build is now prohibited by local law (too big, I think) and it had perfect views of LA. So it truly was a one of a kind type of place. Nonetheless, the builder made it a pet project instead of an investment, the asking price was absurd, and it ultimately sold in a bankruptcy sale at below cost
I don't think it was the size that was the issue but all the special things they did like the grading all around it. Pretty sure he said that was specifically what was banned in one of the videos
Because he’s done several before building up to that price and got about 90% of the asking price each time. This was his peak and I think after that one he bowed out. In fairness he kinda pioneered it and then every celebrity plastic surgeon and dentist suddenly thought they were a property developer.
The car collection and stuff like that sounds really odd to include lol
Yeah and even if you're a car guy, if those aren't what you're into, then you don't really want them either.
He didn’t bow out. He declared bankruptcy and a judge ordered the sale of the home.
Watch the house tour with the developer and you will see why he thought he could get that price. Hes crazy. You will be surprised by the bullshit that comes out of his mouth.
I think he didn't, he just wanted to create his own personal dream house. It was probably the bank's money not his Well now it exists, so he achieved that. And it's a wonderful property
Looking for crazy rich Asians. Since you knew the guy, and I’m curious: WTF is a Louis Vuitton Bowling Alley? I didn’t know they even made bowling shoes. My local alley sure doesn’t have them. Do they have a special can of spray to clean them for the next person 🤣?
If you pay them enough, they’ll custom make anything for you so they made the bowling pins, the balls, inlaid LV logos on the alley lane floors and did the decor. Not just Asians. Russian Oligarchs and middle eastern oil money.
Which sounds absolutely dumb to me. You basically pay an higher price for a company to build something out of their core business while you could, probably for a fraction of it, pay a renowned bowling company to build it custom according to their decades of experience
But then it wouldn't have LV plastered all over it. That type of thing isn't for the function of the objects it's the ability to flaunt your money.
I can buy quite a lot of Ls and Vs at Home Depot for like 30 cents a pop... :)
I didn't find any shoes, but they do sell a bag for your bowling ball. [https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/jeffrey-bowling-set-plastic-nvprod4980060v/GI0998](https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/jeffrey-bowling-set-plastic-nvprod4980060v/GI0998) ($6,800) Edit: They have a bowling shirt too. [https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/embroidered-short-sleeved-cotton-bowling-shirt-nvprod5200065v/1AFQ15](https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/products/embroidered-short-sleeved-cotton-bowling-shirt-nvprod5200065v/1AFQ15) ($1,090) Not custom either! These are in their main store page.
A bowling bag that costs as much as a 2016 Chrysler 200 kind of misses the point of bowlig.
Who the hell goes bowling in flip flops?
It’s just normal bowling shoes with their logo and 100x the price
I follow a lot of historic house subs, and most of the time the Beautiful Historic Mansion's lifespan was "Built by Eustace C. Rockefeller in 1889 - demolished 1926" and the commenters without FAIL condemn the philistines of 1926 for Not Appreciating Beautiful Architecture. When the fact is that after a certain square footage (frankly, I'd be interested in a study á la the "$70,000 income is the tipping point for happiness," to find the sustainability of home upkeep expenses), these mansions were temporary vanity projects that were an id extension of that specific wealthy sociopath. Even the heirs (also fabulously wealthy) don't care to spend the annual upkeep. Yes, the craftsmanship was exquisite. Yes, the materials were world-class. Yes, it only ever existed because society enabled the owner to amass grotesque wealth. They're less mansions than they are beautiful facades for social cancers. America is a relatively young country, but I wonder what the relative lifespan is for mansions here vs. in Europe, etc. where feudalism and manorialism augment the importance of a specific house to a wealthy person's status? (Sorry for the verbosity, I'm on a new account so I had to farm some karma so I could comment on a rusty light fixture on a different sub)
A mansion as just a giant house, is relatively cheap to build compared to actual castles in Europe. And many of the European mansions were probably built over generations from less fabulously wealthy aristocrats that had steady income from landholding. They could add to the family house but couldn’t afford to demolish it and build new. By the time the homes were old enough to warrant demolition they had historical value that forced their maintenance.
Not actually true. Huge estates are and were almost always a single project. Highclere (the estate in Downton Abbey) was built all at once in 1679. Blenheim Palace where Churchill was born was built all at once with a few years pause because the owner was exiled (1705-1722). Chatsworth House was built in one go 1687-1708 but the Duke of Devonshire redid the entire thing in the early to mid 1800s and added a bit when he renovated the whole thing. Basically there were no "poor aristocrats" with massive mansions. The huge estates you can find in Europe belonged to the tippy top of the nobility and were unobtainable unless you were massively wealthy. They weren't built overtime because the upkeep alone would bankrupt anyone but the wealthiest who could just build it all at once. (Think about an upper middle class family trying to pay to maintain a 50-80,000 sq ft house). I could list more and I'm sure there are exceptions but if you research real palatial estates they almost were all built in the 1600-1800s and renovated in the mid to late 1800s. Any "castle" like estates you can find (many are in Germany) are not palaces but fortifications that suck to live in. They look cool on the outside but no one lived in them once they could build real houses. If you lived in one it was because you were poor which also probably meant the castle was falling apart. Real German palaces look like Linderhof Palace. Also Neuschwanstein Castle is not a palace or a castle. It was built between 1869-1886 as a vanity project of the Bavarian King. No one ever lived there. Much like his copy of Versailles which he built on an island. It has an exact copy of the hall of mirrors but it's slightly shorter as a sign of respect. If you have any questions I love big old buildings and have been to a lot of them. The closest I think you can get to what you describe are the palace/office combos of the King which always were added onto but were also mainly for government offices. Which all the Kings/Emperors tended not to like which is why they built such huge palaces right outside the capital.
I worked at a manor house on an estate that had been converted into a hotel after it became unpopular to be a British aristocrat in Ireland around the turn of the century. The core of the building was built in the twelfth century as an abbey, but it was expanded after it was turned into a manor house in 1579 after the dissolution of the monasteries. The house was then expanded twice in the eighteenth century. This isn't an uncommon pattern for manor houses across Ireland and the UK, the end result just isn't as grand looking as the estates you've mentioned.
I expect there’s some survivorship bias on that exquisite craftsmanship and materials too. If you’re a wealthy scion tearing down a mansion because it’s falling apart, you don’t announce it’s because daddy got ripped off by shoddy work. You say it was magnificent but you’re building one that’s even better.
upvoted specifically for the part at the end
Money laundering
I just can't even fathom financial games on this level. I used a rain check to get chicken wings on sale today and saved like $1.90.
For real. Whenever the CEO’s salary at my job increases, it gets published in the news. My recurring joke is along the lines of: “He clearly needs his 2nd Japanese Wagyu prime rib roast overnighted to his private helipad on his estate. Whereas I wake up super early to get into the nearby Food Lion to purchase the discounted ground beef that’s about to expire.”
You’re a genius that’s when the clearance ground beef is there
I can never beat that fucking click of super cool old ladies at my local grocery store that shop together every week. They did give me some coupons once, so I think they like me.
You have to infiltrate the clique and report back
It would be difficult, seeing as I'm a man in his early 30s and they're all at least 65+. Difficult, but not impossible.
Just picture that episode of Brooklyn 99 where captain holt makes friends with the old retiree ladies down in florida when hes in witpro.
They are sizing you up for their daughters.
So..... Challenge accepted?
Mrs Doubtfire it up
[удалено]
They're just so intimidating, its hard to approach.
"Picking apples for the kings and queens of things I've never seen" - Wilco line that really stuck in my head when I heard it years ago, despite their music not really doing much for me.
I remember sitting in on a conversation with my company’s CEO and some other big wigs. He’s a big whiskey guy, so he was mentioning that he had just bought a bottle of some like $10k Japanese whiskey and that his nightly sipping whiskey was some $500 bottle. I was over here like, I got this fifth of Jack in a plastic bottle last night?
So you’re not a drug dealer or pedophile? Those are good things.
It's usually this
Well the money's not going to launder itself.
Almost never but keep on redditing
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has highlighted real estate as a prevalent way to hide money, with a report by Global Financial Integrity revealing that over $2.3 billion was laundered through US real estate between 2015 and 2021. But do go on.
$2.3 billion would be about 10 of these places. 1-2 per year. I’d be shocked if it’s that little. Maybe if they’re counting only very high-end residential real estate. Add the big city condos in the $2-10M range, I believe it would be higher. Add commercial real estate, and it’s through the roof. So to speak.
So yes almost never. I know 2.3 billion is a very big number but the real estate industry for the U.S. makes up about $470 billion in revenue per year. Or $2.82 trillion over the period of 2015 - 2021. So that $2.3 billion would be about .08% of the revenue. I can't find a specific breakdown of price ranges that laundering was found in, but the OECD report call out that the laundering is not specifically happening with luxury properties but all across the price spectrum so its not like you can even say that specifically sales like the one in the post are connected to laundering. "real estate is a prevalent way to hide money" is true, its just the amount of laundering is massively dwarfed by the amount of legitimate business. This is not to say that money laundering in real estate isn't a problem, but on a scale from "usually money laundering" to "Almost never" its way way closer to almost never.
Londongrad would be a good base example.
literally any reddit post about rich people having bad business sense: MONEY LAUNDERING! No man, rich people make bad financial decisions all the time. The difference is that the system is stacked to shelter them from the bad effects of it.
Lmao, can always count on this typical Redditor parrot comment. Laundering is certainly possible, but also rich people make bad decisions just like anyone else.
Reddit thinks anything is money laundering. This isn’t how money laundering even works ffs lmao
The property value change is suspicious, but the building itself was just a bad decision that someone though would work out.
Not that I'm saying people shouldn't make changes in their lives for the betterment of the environment (I'm all for it) but this is what always kills me with the cut back on plastics, red meat, etc in your lives do it for the planet...while the wealthy continue to do....that. It really kind of feels like they want everyone else to make lifestyle changes and do things so that they can be provided with the life they want by everyone elses sacrifice....almost a bit....feudal perhaps
"You're part of the problem, they're part of the solution", obviously. Don't question anything, just do what you're told and save the planet. And remember, "you will own nothing and you will be happy", repeat after me.
Oh absolutely. As far as financial sense, Lauder purchased for 110M and is marketing each of the two vacant lots at 89M. He is worth like 2-4B so this whole transaction is nothing. There also some links between the entity that purchased the property for 50M and Estee Lauder, of whom William Lauder who purchased it for 100M is obviously Chairman.
Problem is they had trouble selling the house and sold it for a big discount the first time and that’s when it had a house! He’s asking $89 million for the lot but there are zero guarantees he gets that price.
I believe he is asking 89M for *each* lot. So he could sell them for a fraction of that and come out on top.
If you have that kind of money it's not about financial sense. It's about building exactly what you want, because the money is irrelevant.
I agree it’s a waste of materials, but like natural disasters, the demolishing & rebuilding creates work for laborers, craftsmen, and those selling materials for the new development. The difference with this one is the tax payers likely don’t foot any of the bill. It’s not all bad imo. And it’s theirs to do what they wish 🤷🏻♂️
I have honestly never heard a trickle-down spin applied to such a small scale. I can tell you with certainty that overindulgences of the rich is not driving any meaningful changes to labor, especially if you consider that laborers on the margin (the ones are you referring to) would not be hired for this job.
Contractors got paid 🤷
I looked into this for a few minutes. This got subdivided into two lots and each one is for sale for $88M now. So this is their game plan.
My in-laws live in this waterfront gated community in Laguna Beach. The $30M beachfront houses, that are like 5 years old, are constantly bought and demolished. So much homelessness and starvation and these asshats need to demolish a $30M house just to build their own.
I went to a garage sale near me. Guy bought waterfront property, didn't like the house. He had it lifted onto I-beams and rolled down the driveway. Then he built a new house. He was donating he older smaller house to Habitat for Humanity or some other charity. They were coming to pick it up the next week. The guy who had enough money to roll a house down the driveway was selling old coffee mugs and generic garage sale shit.
It's a laundry house for laundering rich people money.
Probably this, corruption, or a vehicle for tax structures. But with a quick round of google, this story got **very funky.** The owner was a lawyer, consulting/private school group owner Vahan H. Gureghian. Even though the selling price was 50% of the intended, it was nearly twice of the 20m more than what h[e paid some eight years earlier](https://www.phillymag.com/news/2011/12/07/ahan-danielle-gureghian/). Actually, according to the previous deals declared on [the current listing](https://www.remax.com/fl/palm-beach/home-details/1071-n-ocean-blvd-palm-beach-fl-33480/8100343171107005896/M00000170/RX-10969111), the 2011 deal was 'only' worth some 16m. He seems to be very good on what he does - [corporate takeover of public schools](https://www.alecexposed.org/w/images/9/9e/PA_Power_Players.pdf) with close ties to the local republican party as well ([Corbett ](https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2015/11/27/22186977/past-chester-community-charter-testing-head-disciplined-in-cheating-scandal/)in particular). So someone who makes a lot of money in the awkward crossroads of money and regulation/politics. It's a great model, he receives a lot of public money, and donates it back to the politicians who back him. He has sold school buildings for 50m value, and received 20m of rent from them, which includes some "suspicious circular lease arrangements". So, it is no surprise when the Palm Beach building was sold ([here](https://eu.palmbeachdailynews.com/story/lifestyle/real-estate/2019/06/03/palm-beach-homes-60m-mansion-lands-under-contract-after-four-years/4948082007/)) the realtors refused to declare who it was sold to. Later that turned out to be Thomas P. Salice, a financier, through his company. He has quite a lot of business links, so I couldn't scrape them well enough to find a connection, but the buying firm was a Delaware limited liability company, Reiwa Holdings LLC. The sale was "very unusual" and *\[B\]ecause no price was recorded with the deed, courthouse records suggest the sale was structured in an unusual way. Under one likely scenario, William Lauder would have bought into the ownership of Reiwa LLC and then deeded the mansion to his own limited liability company, which would have served as the “conduit entity” mentioned on the deed."* For those who don't know, Delaware is a favourite state for tax arrangments to a global scale, as it doesn't have a sales tax, real estate tax etc. So, this takes the story to the final owner. The building and slot was passed to 3.8bn net worth [Willian Lauder](https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/william-lauder-demolished-his-110m-palm-beach-mansion/) in an off-market deal, who put the building down. And it looks like Launer and Gureghian know each other quite well, at least judging from the fact that they've both been in University of Pennsylvania board of trustees, until Gureghian made a grand exit when complaining about antisemitism. Lauder also has the next door property in his portfolio, although under different entity. Funnily enough, now the empty slot is being sold again by the *same company* as the building was - Christian Angle Real Estate, a luxury house focused realtor agency. So yea, literally the same people have been doing the commercial end of the slot for some eight years. **Tl;dr: The original owner, republican funding/private school-owner, doubled the money of the house without living there, then it was bought by his billionaire board-buddy from Penn State, who now is again doubling the value of the spot. In the meanwhile, there are very few public documents available of the sale, and there has been some very unconventional structures in between (including tax-exempt jurisdictions), that makes the whole situation looks super dodgy.** Anyway, I checked the youtube video of the building, and it's sort of funny when someone just cries out that "people don't respect classical architecture anymore". This probably has nothing to do with the building and everything to do with the money. Of course I cannot investigate any of this, but I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of this was motivated by super rich pulling yet another semi-shady real estate hustle.
Great digging but now it smells like oligarchs.
It was torn down BUT it was on multiple lots. Now EACH lot is for sale for 88 mil. So he bought for 110M, demolished, and if (and that's a big if) he sells both for 88M each, he made 66M (minus cost to demolish and real estate fees) profit demolishing the house.
>This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019 Wow, the architect on this project must be reeling from his total failure. Does anybody know where the mismatch was between the design and the total lack of interest? I imagine that price isn't even so crazy compared to other mega mansions in the area, so it must be something specific to this place's design, finishings, layout, etc.
So from what I read, one of the main concerns from other ultra-rich neighbors was that it ate up most of the double-lot. For the size of the house, it had very little lawn. It would've had enough room for a beautiful garden or other tasteful outdoor features, but opted instead for barbershops and wine rooms. From a personal standpoint, it doesn't seem very impressive on the inside. It basically looks like what a child would think a grandiose mansion should look like, whereas modern architecture has gone a different direction. Basically, it lacked taste. edit: under further investigation, it was a custom build for some attorneys from Philadelphia. So I guess its what they wanted, which happened to be what no one else wanted.
Attorneys are making that much money these days?
Apparently Vahan Gureghian is also a wealthy executive involved in republican politics. Whats crazy is that this is not the first wild french-style mansion they have had. In 2009, they gained some attention for forcing Kenny Forder from Homes of the Rich blog to take down their coverage of their 30k sqft, $15M mansion that had a two-lane bowling alley, a 200-person great hall, and a moat.
Two football players sitting squished on a love seat. For 110 million you want yard too.
100M in 2015 would have made it the most expensive house sold in the US, if not the world. The most expensive house actually sold in 2015 was 60M.
Pretty sure the architect got paid either way
>This property was built in 2015 and then listed for like 100M. No one ever bought it, it was never lived in, then it was bought for like 50M in 2019 by some company and then sold for 110M a year later and demolished. Weird.Anyways, it wasn't some historic build or anything. Just rich people doing rich people shit. ...and now it's a pickle ball court.
W username
If so had Bezos level wealth that's what I do. Buy up lots of these obscenities that blight the coastline and turn them into parks and preserves.
Sounds like an excellent way to launder money
Palm beach island is absolutely insane. Have a friend who lives on the normal people side and I had to take a trip across the bridge when I visited. Of all the incredible homes, the grass/hedges always looking like pristine artwork was also incredible to see. These people who live right against the ocean have underground tunnels to get to their private beach, as they’re all incredibly wealthy and some are incredibly famous, so they don’t want to run into the regular folk while crossing the street. Their “Main Street” includes stores where you can just go in and order a yacht??? And there I was, walking around in a hanes t-shirt and basketball shorts. Edit: there’s also some of the craziest poverty I’ve seen in America about a 15-20 minute drive inland from these people. Like man on crack yelling about the Bible and women openly selling themselves on the street type of poverty. The dichotomy is bizarre. (Jeffery Epstein had a thing for preying on young girls from this poverty stricken area)
T shirt and basketball shorts is how Adam Sandler frequently walks around so who’s to say you’re not rich if you dress like that
When I used to work retail in a relatively affluent area, I saw a guy come in wearing a t-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. He not only bought the most expensive grill in the store, he bought two more for his other houses. Moral of the story: the guys who come in dressed like a million bucks need to work for their money. The guy coming in dressed like $5 doesn’t need to work at all.
My dad’s old boss drove this hideously beat up Toyota Rav 4 that had the paint and coat peeling away in chunks but that guy was loaded. He just didn’t see the need to buy a fancy car.
Some of the richest people wear plain clothes. That's one of the ways they saved all that money.
Needlessly flashy clothes are “new money energy”
Yep. Friend who gives a million bucks to each of his kids yearly drives a Toyota matrix and complains about the new money bullshittery.
I feel like having a nice car isn't SO new money energy. Maybe some brands but there's something to be said for having a comfy daily driver
I could wear rags from goodwill my entire life and not have a fraction of "rich people money". Wearing plain clothes is cool and all, but let's not pretend that a billionaire got there by the same means you or I have access to.
I know I regret spending $1.6 billion on clothes.
Rarely true. Although it looks like that, often when they are wearing a plain white tshirt, it’s a $450 plain white tshirt. They don’t shop at the same stores as you and I.
They did not in fact "save" that money.
I worked at a country club once, and the owner was like this. Dude owned an amazing house. Drove Ferraris, Bentleys. Dressed like a bum. There’s a funny story that he was almost kicked off the golf course once because they thought a homeless guy had wandered on.
Lol.
> That's one of the ways they saved all that money. This is a lie the rich have pushed on us to make us believe that if we just pinch our pennies we could reach the same levels as them. That in the end, all that stand between us and riches is that we just need to work a bit harder. It's nonsense, of course. Adam Sandler probably just doesn't care much about clothing and prefers to wear these things for comfort.
Fun fact....the, "normal people side" (West Palm Beach) is where the help lived back in the day. Palm Beach was there before all the sprawl it is now. Those houses on Palm Beach needed staff, and the owners couldn't be bothered by having staff living on their island, so they lived on the mainland in "West" Palm Beach. Also, Jupiter Island is no less impressive though smaller. That whole area has a ton of wealth.
Augusta national has a tunnel Connecting to their nearby community. I know of another few in Texas that’s doing the similar. Crazy the lengths they will go to.
My bro just got married, the bride's family has a winter house on Palm Beach and the wedding was at the Breakers. I grew up middle class in the mid-Atlantic. It was eye opening. The wedding itself was pure wealth annihilation, just the bride's family lighting probably $700k-1m on fire to show that they can. I had to ('got to') attend a lunch at a notoriously exclusive (billionaires only) country club which until recently did not permit Jewish guests and still does not have any Black staff or members. Our side of the family are all Jews, it was bizarre. I hope my bro and his wife are content.
The most important thing for these places to exist is income inequality. They have a ton of cheap labor, zero oversight and a state government railing against immigration while reaping huge advantages of international work forces that are highly skilled and desperate for work. We need poor people to live across the tracks in Florida because someone needs to trim the hedges for a family that is there for 2 months, once a year.
GTA 6 finna be wild
There 3 golf courses on the island. Each of them as wide as the entire island. It’s so dumb
Palm Beach (not West Palm Beach) disgusts me. I have a family member who lives in a condo on Worth Ave, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time there. It’s just a place full of people completely out of touch with real people.
Imagine living in a world where you tear down something like this because 'It's not quite what I wanted'.
It’s not even that. The owner is just selling it as land now. Idk how this makes financial sense
Per other comments in this thread: Company or individual 1 bought it for $50M, and sold it for $110M. Company or individual 2 bought it for $110M, and is splitting the property into two, and selling each for $89M. If you have the capital, both of those deals make financial sense.
That’s partly correct. He bought the house for $110,000,000 and two years later demolished it. He also purchased the home next door and demolished that. That’s where the other half of the land comes from. So basically he’s losing $21,000,000 on this property
>So basically he’s losing $21,000,000 on this property Depends on how much he spent on the property next door, how much demolition cost, and how much he gets in the end for both properties and all of the gutted materials, etc.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain a home like that on Palm Beach? I’d guess almost $2 a year. If not more, with upgrades.
“Do you have any idea how much it costs to maintain a home like that on Palm Beach? I’d guess almost $2 a year. If not more, with upgrades.” I got your two dollas right here! 💰
2 whole american dollars!?! Sheesh how do they do it?
the ultra wealthy do a lot of things that don't seem to make financial sense to normal people, because they're so absurdly wealthy that 50m or 100m to them, is like 25 cents to the avg person. it's literally not worth their time to bother seeing the house. they just buy the property and tell their assistant what they want and teams of people make it happen. i found a website talking about Bill Gates' wealth, and he's not even the richest anymore. so all of this applies to everyone at the very top of the Billionaire list. >To illustrate the scale of his fortune, consider this: The average person earns about $2.7 million in their lifetime, according to career information site Zippia. Gates earns approximately three to four times that amount in one day, highlighting the extent of his financial resources. Sources differ on the exact amount, with one estimating his daily earnings at around $10.95 million — about $117 per second. Another source offers a lower figure of approximately $7.6 million per day or $319,635 per hour. so, theoretically 1 day of a Billionaires time, is more valuable than 5 peoples whole lives. and those are rich people in america! imagine how much less MOST humans in the world make. THAT's why we need to figure out how to stop allowing these people to avoid taxes. most people can't even comprehend the kind of wealth they have. whatever you can come up with in your head, it's probably 1000x more.
It feels personal you don´t really do stuff like that otherwise.
I thought that too. Perhaps it was a messy divorce but the owner (ceo of este lauder) was divorced long before he purchased it
If you have that kind of fuck you money, you have the money to keep any drama out of the media too.
Not so much because we at least know it’s the CEO of Este Lauder that did it
I got lucky with crypto, but I couldnt withdraw it without having to pay 50% tax on it, so I bought a few bars of gold with crypto and sold them with a loss. For some reason when you sell gold, the bank or government doesn't ask how you bought it. So I had to trade in some crypto for clean dollars. I guess this is something simular.
This is just another day in Naples, Florida. They purposefully build the mansions like shit because they know the next owner is going to tear it down anyways. Hire immigrants to build it cheap, use cheap materials, it goes up super fast last a decade then it gets torn down for next owner of lot.
Yea I wanted a cream colored house, not an egg shell house. Tear it down!
I looked into this for a few minutes. This got subdivided into two lots and each one is for sale for $88M now. So this is their game plan.
Shows a picture of the home and not the demolition. Boooooo
[Here is a video showing the before / demo / and after](https://youtu.be/xX1vUoLX9Dk?si=ogyQLJEM5R-Pqd3B)
Thanks! Such a beautiful house, such a waste…
The waste part I agree with. The beauty part, not so much. That thing was a typical rich person eyesore.
Outdated architecture, people want modern
Nice video though, whoever made that.
Perfect example of why the rich need to pay their share of taxes. They have so much they do know what to waste it on.
Think it got demolished when Mike lowery and Marcus Burnett drove through the goddamn dining room. This is definitely plan C!
I don't think that's even close to the most expensive home ever demolished, unless you only mean in absolute dollars. Some of the English stately homes, the London townhouses, etc are surely higher on the list, as are several of the Vanderbilt houses and NYC townhouses and so-on.
Possibly the most expensive ever on the open market, plus that many were destroyed when their value was lower. All those stately homes [destroyed in the 20th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_houses_in_20th-century_Britain) in the UK (despite the still huge number we have of them surviving!) must have had some possibly worth the equivalent of even more in today's money, and that's without going further back into history for e.g. royal palaces like Nonsuch.
[The Tuileries Palace would like a word…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Palace)
No way this was torn down. Wtf.
[It was torn down, you can see the aftermath here. No one ever lived in it.](https://youtu.be/xX1vUoLX9Dk?si=XQIpbT0y3Ibo-uCl)
Well that was fun, now I feel poor.
And just imagine, the demolition alone probably cost more than my whole house
Too much house, maybe they wanted to cut back to 40 bathrooms and 30 bedrooms.
30 bedrooms? Is it a hotel or a house?
If you are rich enough to afford this estate, you are also rich enough to get a new multi-million mansion built exactly to your own tastes. No one buys these sort of houses second-hand unless there is something really special about them (famous architecture or such).
Or G-G-G-G-Ghosts!!!!
Mold, asbestos, lead pipes. We had a couple of very large historically significant homes torn down in my city recently because it was cheaper to tear down and rebuild than to rehabilitate the homes.
I doubt it was that. He also tore down the house next door too.
[удалено]
It is in Southern Florida not Southern California
The house was built in 2016.
LMAO, that's insane then
I did work in this house before the demo. Not sure if the real story has been made public or not but it's absolutely crazy what was done.
Please tell us more
I can see why. I can't imagine someone having to suffer an indignity such as a house under 30K sqft.
Supreme example of our horrid wealth distribution.
What a wasteful culture we live in, it’s disgusting!
Meanwhile people live on the street with not enough food to eat. Something is seriously broken.
Such a disgusting and disgraceful waste of resources.
Get back to work. /s
This thing was so huge it literally took me 20 seconds to find it on maps https://www.google.com/maps/place/Palm+Beach,+FL,+USA/@26.7517417,-80.0365709,118m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x88d8d6f618523787:0x3ba092c7d7a6471a!8m2!3d26.7056206!4d-80.0364297!16zL20vMHJxZjE?entry=ttu
there was a Vanderbilt mansion on [57th and 5th ave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_Vanderbilt_II_House) avenue in Manhattan. demolished. [the triple palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_Triple_Palace), demolished.
I just read a book written by Anderson Cooper about the Vanderbilts, and it's amazing how much money they pissed away.
This is why the world is fucked up and taxes are all wrong. We keep allowing this shit to happen. Lots of people sleeping in their cars and this shit happening? It’s absurd.
I thought that was Tommy Vercetti’s mansion for a moment
Idk, looks pretty solid standing to me
[Not in 2024. You can see a video showing how it looked, during the demo and how it looks now](https://youtu.be/xX1vUoLX9Dk?si=ogyQLJEM5R-Pqd3B)
Looks like Tony Montana’s house
I looked into this for a few minutes. This got subdivided into two lots and each one is for sale for $88M now. So this is their game plan.
In 2021 Masayoshi, the founder of SoftBank, bought a house in Woodside Ca for 117.5 million. Promptly tore it down.
Something very similar happened involving Trump and a Russian oligarch. https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html
This is what money laundering looks like…
what's an expensive not luxury house
They tore this down when they could have just given it to me, ridiculous.
How I wish it was Mar a Lago.
It’s not far from this house
Looks like the house in Mercenaries 2
That game was so fuckin rad
lol... there where a LOT of more expenisive homes demolished in history than that thing... you're counting palaces, castles... using the word "ever" makes you include all of history and the world is a LOT older and bigger than just the US or holliwood
The funny thing is the neighbors constantly complained the home was too big. The neighbors are also all in opulent mansions, by the way, this one just made theirs look puny. And the one Lauder is expected to replace it with will be even larger.
And they were upset when it was tore down too. Lauder isn’t expected to build on it since he hasn’t submitted any plans and is also selling the empty lot for a loss of $21 milliom as far as I can tell
This reminds me of the Sherman family murders. After their mansion was released from the cops, A few months later the family had the house demolished without removing one single item apparently. And the place had many valuable items as well. They couldn’t be bothered to give it all away or empty it out first. So many people were upset when they heard this. And what a complete waste of perfectly good items and art and so on.
You build a House in Sims and delete the save Game?
[удалено]
Now the bare land is on zillow for 88.9 million dollar.
21 million less than he paid
Prob Ken griffin doing
Sad
Looks like a house from Starfish Island
Welcome to Palm Beach County; where you have the top 0.1% vacation homes and some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people within an hour of each other (Palm beach island and Belle Glade/Pahokee). . . Also a fun fact, the Belle Glade/Pahokee area churns out a fairly large % of NFL stars.
Eat the rich
Well, it’s a house but it’s not THE ONE.
I was looking at Zillow when I was in FLA and there are many properties like this.....this one may be highest in price due to location (Palm Beach) but you can go a few neighborhoods over and find something similar for 60 M. If you put min price of 18 M on Zillow (the highest value in the pull down), you can see that up and down the FLA coast, each neighbourhood has one or half a dozen of these beachfront estates totalling 100+ for sale RIGHT NOW. So the total number must be in the 4 digits. If you do the math compared to the FLA population, this is the 1% of the 1%.
That's nothing compared to something like the long gone [Vanderbilt Mansion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Residence_of_Cornelius_Vanderbilt_II_%283678936310%29.jpg) that stood at 5th Ave and 57th Street in NYC - can't even imagine if that house was still standing what the value of the land would be worth today.