In LA’s Bel Air, $100M is the price of admission

You think home prices in New York are crazy? Well, yes. They are. But developers in Los Angeles are upping their ultra-deluxe game, hoping to compete.

A wave of massive, amenity-drenched homes, many of them speculative, is hitting the L.A. market, with some developers asking as much as $100 million.

The 11-acre Park Bel Air, for example, which will offer homes from 58,000 to 66,000 square feet, will ask $115 million for its cheapest properties, rising to $150 million for buyers seeking extra bells and whistles.

“There are probably only about 3,000 people [in the world] who can afford this,” Barry Watts, president of Domvs London, the Park Bel Air’s developer, told the Wall Street Journal. The buyer “needs to be a billionaire.”

There are currently more than four dozen homes in the Los Angeles area that are asking more than $20 million.

Developer Nile Naimi is currently building a 74,000-square-foot house with a 5,000-square-foot master bedroom, a 30-car garage, a “Monoco-style casino” and four swimming pools. He plans to ask $500 million for the property.

“It’s almost as if there is no shame in wildly overpricing a listing anymore,” said Miller Samuel’s Jonathan Miller, who argued the high prices are often more of a marketing ploy, to draw attention to new properties.

Fewer than 10 U.S. homes have ever sold for $100 million or more, Miller told the Journal, only three of which were in California. [WSJ] – Ariel Stulberg