Opendoor CEO pays $32M for Bel-Air “propeller home”

Eric Wu, CEO of Opendoor, has closed the deal on a glass-wrapped Bel-Air mansion shaped like an airplane propeller for $32 million, down from an ask of $56 million.

Wu, the CEO of the San Francisco-based iBuyer, bought the 19,000-square foot home at 11490 Orum Rd., Dirt reported.

The nine-bedroom, 10 full-bath estate was designed by Zoltan Pali, design principal at SPF: architects, based in Culver City.

Soaring atop the Bel-Air hills, the boldly styled home appears from a distance to hover over the city like a descending UFO. The spec mansion was finished in December 2018 and listed for $56 million. The price was slashed to $42 million in May 2021.

“The home’s plan is in a Y-shape with each leg like tentacles reaching out to the city below and creating three different exterior courtyards allowing for different activities such as arrival, entertaining, playing and relaxing,” Pali told the New York Post last fall.

The avant-garde home, dubbed the Orum Residence, was featured last year in a Tiffany & Co. advertisement featuring Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who became the fourth woman to wear a $30 million, 128-carat yellow diamond necklace donned by Audrey Hepburn for the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The three-story home, on 1.6 acres across a Bel-Air hilltop peninsula, has 270-degree views of Downtown LA, Century City, Getty Center, Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.
It was built on spec by Thai heiress and real estate developer Dang Bodiratnangkura, wife of Olympic figure skating champion Evan Lysacek.

Records show she paid $6.1 million for the property in 2014, and then demolished the existing home. It then took her more than a year to secure permits for the aggressively styled new construction.

The three-story glass-walled building “floats” in the shape of an airplane propeller.
It’s finished in gold, white and black marble imported from Italy, Switzerland, Turkey and China, as well as limestone from Portugal and Italy, according to Realtor.com.

The mega-mansion has dual chef’s kitchens and living rooms, a 1,000-bottle wine room, a Dolby Atmos theater and a wellness center. A central “floating” staircase zig-zags its way up from the foyer to the penthouse.

Outside, it has shaded patios, fire pits, an LED-lit ozone pool and hot tub, a 30-car motor court, a four-bed guest house, and a large grass yard.

Wu, a longtime resident of San Francisco’s posh Pacific Heights neighborhood, helped launch Opendoor in 2014. The firm went public in December 2020, briefly making the tech entrepreneur a billionaire before its stock price fell.

[Dirt] – Dana Bartholomew

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