Meet Shahram Balakhani, the enigmatic developer behind one of LA’s most inventive spec mansions

The Bel Air property hit the market this year at $68M

Shahram Balakhani and 1859 Bel Air Road (Compass/Levik Stephan)

Trevor Bach

Jun 20, 2023, 4:37 PM

On a sunny afternoon in April, the Los Angeles developer Shahram Balakhani gazed outward from the middle floor of his just completed, 20,000-square-foot mansion, toward a sweeping vista of the green hills of Bel Air, and pointed out a conspicuous splash of bird poop on the otherwise immaculate window.

It did nothing to dampen the developer’s mood. “In some cultures,” he quipped, “it’s a sign of good luck.”

There are some spec developers — especially in L.A. — who are known as much for their brash personalities and antics as their extravagant homes. You see them on reality shows and at open house soirees with scantily clad women and exotic animals. Or wrapped up in twisting, years-long legal dramas and headline-grabbing fights with neighbors.

Shahram “Sean” Balakhani does not fit that mold. In person he comes across as remarkably composed, speaking slowly and projecting a mellow, contented demeanor that seems fit for a yoga teacher or Hollywood guru. Balakhani has a slight build, with a full head of silver-tinted hair. He speaks earnestly about creative pursuits and using his talents to benefit society.

“I met Sean many, many years ago,” said Levik Stephan, a Compass broker who shares the Bel Air home’s listing and was sitting near Balakhani in a spacious living area of the home’s middle floor. “And it was just — you couldn’t tell who’s who. Usually developers have so much ego and power trips.”

“I realize in life,” Balakhani responded a minute later, “that when you’re calm you make better decisions.”

“The cherry”

The developer’s latest project speaks quite loudly. The mansion at 1859 Bel Air Road, high up in the exclusive enclave, was designed to conceal its best features. From the street only a single-story, somewhat strange-looking curved frame is visible — Balakhani has said he wanted to elicit mystery, and that his young daughter refers to the house as a spaceship. But walk through the front entrance, past an overflowing plant wall, and it becomes apparent the house is actually three levels, built improbably into the side of a steep canyon. On a clear day the view stretches to Catalina Island, 22 miles off the coast.

The home also boasts an infinity pool, theater, 1,200-bottle wine cellar and its own custom fragrance, emitted via inconspicuous scent diffusers. The central showpiece is an aluminum and steel spiral staircase that was designed to appear suspended and took two and a half years to build.

“We have had engineers that have come and looked at this property, and they have fallen in love with the staircase,” Balakhani effused. “They get surprised: ‘How is it standing?’”

When the property hit the market in January, at $68 million, it instantly made a splash as one of L.A.’s top new luxury homes, with corresponding attention from outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Robb Report, which referred to it as “avant garde” and “a modernist marvel.” The price tag, which hasn’t moved, ranks it among the top dozen or so most expensive houses on the market in L.A. County. Until a couple new Malibu listings hit the market this month at around $70 million, it also ranked as the most expensive home that was completed in 2023 — a year that’s turned out to be tumultuous for L.A.’s ultra high end market in part because of the city’s steep new transfer tax

After more than seven years of work, Balakhani considers it a kind of magnum opus.

“I will say this is the cherry,” he said.

But real estate development isn’t even his first career.

The medicine man

Balakhani was born into a Jewish family in pre-Revolution Iran. But when he was a young teen and eligible for military conscription, in the mid-1980s, his mother decided to uproot. The family left first for Switzerland, where after a few months and multiple failed American visa applications Balakhani remembers being awoken one night by Swiss authorities, who took his mother and her three young children to the airport and loaded them onto a plane for deportation.

A young Balakhani, the family’s best English speaker, ran toward the cockpit and pleaded with the pilot not to send his family back to Iran. Soon his family was off the plane; not long after they were bound for Israel, where his mom procured a visa. They eventually moved to Los Angeles, where Balakhani studied at UCLA and then the Cleveland Chiropractic College after realizing he wasn’t suited for emergency medicine and that dental patients weren’t usually eager to chat.

“I’m a really talkative and social guy,” he said. “So I said, ‘No, that’s not me either.’ So I took some time off and did some research until I found a field which is medical, but doesn’t have emergencies.”

He practiced chiropractic medicine for 18 years, then opened a successful multi-speciality group on L.A.’s affluent Westside. Healing patients was deeply satisfying.

“Imagine somebody’s having pain for years, and not many doctors are able to deal with that, and then they come to you, finally, and they feel better,” he said. “That’s priceless.”

But real estate had always been in Balakhani’s blood: In Tehran, his mother — who was also one of the first women in the city to drive a car, he said — had been a developer, and her career left a lasting impression. Decades later he found his way into the trade by accident, when he decided to build his own family home in L.A.’s Westwood neighborhood after not finding a house they wanted.

Balakhani bought that site, at 10670 Wellworth Avenue, for $1.2 million in 2012, according to property records. Then he built a modern, 5,800-square-foot Mediterranean-style villa that his wife decided was too big for the couple to live in. In 2015, he sold it to a fashion company CEO for $4.6 million, coming out ahead by more than $2 million on his costs, he said.

“I gained a self confidence,” he said, to “say, Yes, ‘I can build beautiful homes.’”

He moved on to more single family luxury residential projects in L.A. including a residential property in Beverly Hills where he built a contemporary, 5,800-square-foot pad that he and his wife still own. He also built two homes in San Jose with his brother in law.

But after completing several successful projects, Balakhani felt a calling to do something grander. He bought the 1.4-acre 1859 Bel Air Road site in late 2015, for $2.5 million, and began plotting a plan for a structure that would match his ambition.

“On day one,” he said, “when I went to my architects, I said please design something that is beyond — [that] nobody has built in the past. So they designed it, they did the architectural plans, and they showed it to me. And then said, ‘Do you really want to do this?’ Because this is a crazy development.”

When he saw the renderings, Balakhani said, tears formed in his eyes.

His team went on to interview 20 different construction firms to find one that agreed to create the home’s unique curved steel structure, and the vertical design required removing more than 1,000 truckloads of dirt. Once Covid hit, prices on some building materials shot up by half; in order to manage the project’s hundreds of workers, Balakhani stepped aside from his medical group. But more than seven years and tens of millions of dollars later, he also says he got exactly what he wanted.

“It’s an amazing feeling. You feel that you’ve achieved something extraordinary,” he said. “I mean, every piece of this project is art.”

Balakhani is not sure if or when he’ll develop another property. He is currently producing a documentary about mental health, and he’s also a major investor on a new medical device for cardiac patients. His plans for the device are even more ambitious than his seven-year spec mansion project.

“God willing, in 18 months that will revolutionize the field of cardiology,” he said.

Los Angeles