Vape billionaire Riaz Valani has bought a mid-century Malibu beach home for $31 million.
Valani, the first person to invest in electronic cigarette maker Juul, has been revealed as the buyer of the 5,000-square-foot estate at 33608 Pacific Coast Highway last summer in an off-market deal, Dirt.com reported.
The sellers were hedge fund mogul Michael Price, founder of Empyrean Capital, and his wife Jodi, who paid $19.8 million for the beachfront home in 2016.
The remodeled Encinal Bluffs estate, built in 1955, sits on three-quarters of an acre behind a line of boulders along a 125-foot stretch of beach.
It includes a two-story main house with three bedrooms and a two-story guesthouse with three bedrooms, with four bathrooms between both houses.
The main house, trimmed in natural wood with hardwood floors throughout, has a living room with floor-to-ceiling glass looking out on the Pacific Ocean. It includes a dining room with fireplace and a kitchen with eating nook.
A master bedroom upstairs shares the same ocean views and includes a soaking tub and cedar closet. A second bedroom has its own private deck and outdoor shower.
The guest house, sheathed in wood, includes a media room, kitchenette and attached two-car garage, with bedrooms with decks and ocean views.
Out back, a pool and spa surrounded by grass sit above the beach.
In 2019, Valani paid $40 million for Johnny Carson’s former estate in Malibu’s Point Dume, where he lives with his partner Augusta Tigrett, daughter of Hard Rock Café co-founder Isaac Tigrett and Ringo Starr’s ex-wife Maureen Starkey.
Records indicate he may have bought the Encinal Bluffs property for his parents, Badru and Semin Valani. Together, they own a home in the Silicon Valley town of Atherton, considered the priciest in the nation.
Valani is worth $1.8 billion, according to Forbes, after investing in Juul, once worth $38 billion. When Marlboro parent company Altria paid $12.8 billion for 35 percent of the company in 2018, Valani received $2 billion. — Dana Bartholomew
Read more
Residential
Los Angeles
Dr. Dre selling his Malibu beach estate with $20M asking price
Residential
Los Angeles
Video gamer Jon Burton cuts price of Malibu estate to $110M