Kurt Rappaport to Roll Out $300M Estate Listing in Malibu

Call it a publicity stunt to draw attention to a pending mansion listing. Or a sincere marketing effort to add nearly $100 million to the statewide record price for a house.

Whatever the case, luxury real estate broker Kurt Rappaport says he’s preparing to market a Malibu property for $300 million as a private listing, Bloomberg reported.

If it fetches that price, the undisclosed property would be the most expensive house anywhere in the nation.

The record price for a U.S. home is a Manhattan penthouse that Citadel founder Ken Griffin bought in 2019 for $238 million.

The most expensive house now on the market is a Naples, Florida, estate now seeking $295 million.

In California, the spring sale of eyeglasses mogul James Jannard’s Malibu estate for $210 million holds the record.

Rappaport’s current top asking price of a listed Malibu home is $85 million for the Paradise Cove estate of Peter O’Malley, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 2022, media mogul Byron Allen bought a nearby estate for $100 million.

With so much wealth in the world and no way to create new land, there will always be demand for the best locations, said Rappaport, co-founder of Westside Estate Agency, a boutique brokerage in Beverly Hills.

“There are only so many seats in the front row,” the California alpha agent told Bloomberg.

It was Rappaport who brokered the June sale by Jannard of his 9.5-acre beachfront estate in west Malibu for $210 million, shattering the state home sale record. The buyer was not disclosed.

And it was Rappaport who handled the high-water mark set last year by Beyoncé and Jay-Z, who bought a 6-acre, 40,000-square-foot estate in Malibu’s Paradise Cove for $190 million.

The previous record, also brokered by Rappaport, was broken in 2021 by billionaire Marc Andreessen, who paid $177 million for a 7-acre estate overlooking Paradise Cove.

Malibu’s 21-mile coast now claims the three most expensive homes in California. If Rappaport can close a deal for $300 million, it could claim a fourth, also the most expensive home in the U.S.

— Dana Bartholomew