Rick Caruso asks $40M for Malibu beach house

Developer and founder of eponymous firm hoping to seize on hot market

Rick Caruso and 21528 Pacific Coast Highway (Getty, The Agency)
Rick Caruso and 21528 Pacific Coast Highway (Getty, The Agency)

Developer Rick Caruso is listing his Malibu beach house for $40 million.

Caruso used the 7,200-square-foot home as a testing ground for design features he would use for his Rosewood Miramar Beach resort in Montecito, according to the Wall Street Journal. It is located at 21528 Pacific Coast Highway.

The founder and CEO of Caruso Company, he bought the property for $11.8 million in 2008, took the home down to the studs, and rebuilt it from there. The home now has five bedrooms and eight bathrooms. A spokesperson said the family is expanding a property in Orange County.

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Malibu has been an especially strong seller’s market since coronavirus restrictions were lifted early last summer. Since then, Malibu has outpaced other Los Angeles submarkets in many key sales metrics. Celebrities have also been gobbling up pricey homes there in the last few months.

The median sales price reached $5.1 million in the fourth quarter, 71 percent higher than the fourth quarter of 2019. And inventory was down 16 percent year-over-year, with 31 percent more homes trading in the fourth quarter than a year prior.

Caruso Company’s bread and butter is retail and hotels, the two property types hit particularly hard by the pandemic. But the Rosewood Miramar Beach is one of the luxury resorts that was able to fill rooms last year with discounted extended stays. [WSJ] —Dennis Lynch