Niami gets $50M+ for Beverly Hills spec mansion

Nile Niami has found an unidentified buyer to purchase his 20,500-square foot Opus mansion in Beverly Hills for a bit north of $50 million, putting a close to a colorful, years-long sales process staged by the high-profile spec mansion developer.

Niami found the buyer for the North Hillcrest Road home himself, according to Rayni Williams, who was a former sales agent on the property. Williams, who along with her husband Branden Williams of Hilton & Hyland had listed the property for over a year, said the sale was a “direct deal between buyer and seller.” She said she did not know any buying or selling agents on the deal.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the sale.

Niami completed the Opus in 2017, a Paul McLean-designed home whose extraordinary features include three Damian Hirst paintings, a gold Rolls-Royce and a Lamborghini. The developer first listed the property for $100 million with a sales pitch video that included a woman in lingerie waking up to find a topless, masked lady painted in gold waiting at the foot of her bed. (A Niami associate described the video as a “high art concept” featuring a “modern day Cleopatra.”)

The developer then repeatedly cut the listing price, bringing it down to $59.9 million, only to then bump it up again to $80 million in September.

Why, then, Niami would sell the mansion for less than even the lowest asking price is not clear, though the developer faces upcoming payments.

Perhaps Niami’s most famous project is “The One” a Bel Air spec mansion that the developer wants $500 million for — more than three times the sales amount of the most expensive home buy in California history (which would be Lachlan Murdoch’s $150 million December purchase of the Chartwell estate in Bel Air).

Payments on money that Niami borrowed to build The One, including an $82.5 million bridge loan by Hankey Capital, are reportedly coming due by the end of this year.