After Kanye West gutted the beachfront Malibu mansion, events at the home took a turn.
Japanese architect Tadao Ando built the concrete fortress over seven years for banker Richard Sachs, finishing in 2013. Ando, who has a following among celebrities and the wealthy, has designed only about two dozen homes in the United States — boxy, light-filled and gray. “My decision to accept [clients’] projects depends mainly on their personality and aura,” he told the author of a book about his work.
Sachs listed the home in 2020 for $75 million, and West, who now goes by Ye, picked it up for $57.3 million, then tore out the windows, doors and wiring, drawing the attention of the press. He went to sell in January 2024, asking $53 million, then $39 million, parting with the place for $21 million.
But the buyer didn’t come from Hollywood or Wall Street. Steven “Bo” Belmont of Belwood Investments was a home flipper who depended on a fractionalized investing model for financing. He had never done a project anywhere near this scale.
The concrete box on the beach, the much-maligned rapper, the destruction of the masterpiece, the discounted pricing and the home-flipping new owner: It all made for a wild tale.
But since Belwood took over ownership, the story of the home got messier and more dramatic.
The Belmont model
Belmont’s idea was to democratize real estate. Anyone with at least $1,000 could be part of Belwood’s business. Originally, that meant a few hundred investors each owning a percentage of a suburban three-bedroom, not a 4,000-square-foot Malibu property with an architectural pedigree that commanded a premium. At the time of the sale, brokers forecast that the home could fetch more than $50 million after restoration. The buzz exposed the self-assured, Northern California native to a broader base of prospective investors and more high-end deals, expanding his firm’s portfolio to well over 40 properties.
Malibu can be a difficult market. Beachfront property is scarce in the formerly sleepy surf town, and regulation stifles new development. Entrepreneurs, entertainment bigwigs, A-list celebrities and others have bought over the years; coming off the pandemic, the housing market enjoyed a major run up. Oakley founder Jim Jannard reportedly sold his $210 million compound at 33064 Pacific Coast Highway in 2024 to nab a new state record. The same year, Laurene Powell Jobs snapped up a $94 million property at 28106 Pacific Coast Highway, next to three she already owned.
And in March of 2025, someone emerged as a buyer for Belwood’s Malibu house: a Montana developer named Andrew Mazzella, who had made his career building homes out of concrete and appreciated the value of the home from an artistic and financial perspective.
It was good timing.
Mega dealmaking began cooling last year, with Malibu’s home prices in March falling nearly 14 percent from the same time a year ago, to a median $4.8 million, according to Redfin. Fewer homes are selling and listings are spending more time sitting, mirroring many other parts of Los Angeles County’s high end.
For Belwood, the market turn was devastating, since flipped properties that didn’t sell fast choked the firm’s revenue stream.
Then, in August, the deal for the Ando-Kanye-Malibu house fell apart. Problems compounded.
“The Malibu house killed him,” said one individual familiar with the project, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “It was costing him money he didn’t have.”
“I will tell you, he is a dreamer and he is not always realistic with what he says. He’s always more optimistic than realistic, like I am.”
The following month, a former employee accused the company in an Orange County Superior Court lawsuit of being a Ponzi scheme preying on unsophisticated investors, noting that Belmont had a felony conviction. Two months later, MZ Brokerage, which owned a loan on the property, filed a notice of default, accusing Belwood of being late on more than $814,000 in payments. A foreclosure auction was scheduled for March 19.
Belwood made a last-ditch effort to stave it off, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a day before the auction.
Information from bankruptcy proceedings presented a bleak picture. Just five Belwood properties still generate income as rentals, and even those are “break even,” Belmont said at an April 20 creditors meeting. Another 11 of the company’s properties, mostly in California, are in foreclosure.
The United States Trustee said in court documents “no viable business exists” for Belwood and has asked a judge to either dismiss the case or convert it to a Chapter 7 liquidation. A hearing is set for June 9.
The Securities & Exchange Commission has launched an investigation, according to court documents that have not been reported previously. An SEC spokesperson declined comment.
The company may also have been operating without a license to sell securities in California, according to the former Belwood employee’s lawsuit. California law defines a security as any investment where money is invested and is reliant on someone else’s work to generate a profit. A Department of Financial Protection and Innovation spokesperson said there is no pending application on file for the company to sell securities or for an exemption. The spokesperson also confirmed the company has not been the subject of any prior enforcement actions.
Belmont said he had moved investors into an LLC secured by a deed, though it’s unclear if that addresses the allegations.
He remains optimistic, believing he can work with the company’s lenders or put together debtor-in-possession financing that would allow for a swift reorganization, emergence from Chapter 11 and then completion of Malibu and other properties.
“This [reorganization] is about coming out stronger and taking care of the Belwood investor community,” Belmont told The Real Deal.
Climbing out of a well
Belmont was born in Santa Rosa and grew up farther north, in California’s wine country. His mother was a real estate agent and worked with many local developers. He learned everything about the business, helping clean up job sites and sitting with his mom in the office talking shop.
In 2003, when he was 20, he got a job at Ameriquest Mortgage. Real estate finance turned out to be his forté.
“It was amazing,” he said. “Everybody was making a ton of money. It reminded me of the spike in real estate during Covid. Houses were selling. Rates were low and people were loving it. Then [the market turned and] I was able to see, ‘OK, here’s the consequences of a market like this.’”
When the work dried up for subprime lenders in 2008, Belmont began buying bank-owned homes selling at 30 percent less than what they may have gone for in prior years.
Belmont flipped his first home in 2008, using the internet and books to figure out how to handle the cabinet, flooring and electrical installations himself. Friends took notice and wanted in, and with their funds, he was able to take on multiple projects at once, seeding the idea for Belwood.
He was driven by helping individual investors pool funds to do flips they’d never afford on their own.
“Large firms don’t want the democratization of real estate,” Belmont said. “They don’t want people pooling their money and buying real estate. They want you to use their money. Belwood has figured out a way to participate with both: pool funds and secure funds like a bank with a deed of trust.”
In August 2013, while renting a house in Napa with a group, Belmont got into a fight with a neighbor who asked the party to be quiet. He swung a pitchfork, injuring the neighbor, and made death threats to the neighbor’s friends. A jury convicted him of assault with a deadly weapon, mayhem and battery with serious bodily injury, and a judge sentenced him to five years in San Quentin State Prison. He served three, in three different facilities.
“I compare it to being at the bottom of a well. I’m sure you’re not familiar with San Quentin. I wasn’t,” he said. “It was very dark and murky and scary and the worst place I’ve ever been. So when you’re at the bottom of a well, you could accept your fate and stay down there or you could look up and look at the side of the well. There’s very small places to put your fingers, but there’s a pathway back up there. So that’s what I had to deal with when I got out. It was the clawing back.”
He launched Belwood when he was released in 2018.
Soon, he built up a good track record. One investor, Andy Rosten, invested between $50,000 and $100,000 on a half dozen different Northern California flips with Belmont and said he achieved returns of about 50 percent on each.
Belmont said he never hid his past or the fact that he served time. Those who have done business with him through Belwood told TRD they knew of his mercurial side. Still, they stuck with him when the money was flowing, sometimes bringing in their own family and friends to invest.
A reason for rules
Belwood’s “democratizing of real estate” makes for good rhetoric, but having dozens or hundreds of participants in a deal can get messy. The property records for any given Belwood holding are dizzying, pages and pages of deeds of trusts securing the loans of individual investors, some of whom are retirees and others working professionals looking to dabble in real estate.
Especially after 2008’s subprime mortgage meltdown, it didn’t seem far-fetched that large firms ought to be gatekeepers of real estate finance, a murky world easily misunderstood by the layman.
“That’s why they have the whole qualified investor standard with the SEC,” said Michael Brown of Pasadena-based MZ Brokerage, which bought the loan from CV3 Financial Services that was used to finance the Malibu acquisition.
The hundreds of individual investments in Belwood properties were “micro loans that are super risky,” he added. “I imagine people didn’t do the due diligence and go see the property. If you’re not keeping tabs on the progress of it, this is what happens.”
The individual investors were also putting their money in next to larger players. That included the $18.5 million CV3 loan used to acquire the Malibu property. In exchange for the loan, CV3 received a 50 percent equity stake in Malibu. The deed of trust that secured that note indicates CV3 would have been required to provide approval for any junior loans.
“I’m shocked that he did that to those people,” Brown said. “Somebody giving $20,000 or $5,000 behind an $18.5 million loan didn’t feel right to me.”
Some of Belwood’s investors did eventually grow skeptical.
Rosten said he became less enthusiastic about the firm after his investment through Belwood at Loch Lomond Resort & RV Park in Middleton, which is about a two-hour drive northwest of Sacramento. Belwood got into commercial real estate at the site with an ambitious multi-year project to revitalize the property with an Olympic-sized pool, grocery store and restaurant, and Rosten went in with $110,000.
In some court documents, Belmont had admitted that Belwood owned the property and it was subject to a lien. But at the April 20 creditor’s hearing, he said the property was owned by a third party.
“I will tell you, he is a dreamer and he is not always realistic with what he says,” Rosten said. “He’s always more optimistic than realistic, like I am.”
Loch Lomond will be Rosten’s last Belwood investment. He thinks he’ll get some money back on the project but is fuzzy on just how much that might be.
“My impression is that he goes by the adage of you rob Peter to pay Paul, if you know what I mean,” he said. “He’s juggling all the time.”
Open war
The house’s demons continued to reveal themselves over the past year, as brokers fought over the listing, the would-be buyer backed out and Belwood’s finances led to skirmishes among investors.
Back when Mazzella seemed ready to buy, Nest Seeker’s Amanda Lynn L’Hommedieu had a signed, exclusive agreement with Belmont and expected to represent both sides of the transaction, according to a brokerage spokesperson.
A copy of the agreement dated March 19, 2025, was obtained and reviewed by TRD and indicates a 3 percent commission. Belmont contends the agreement was for 1 percent.
Ultimately, when the Malibu Road home went into contract, The Oppenheim Group’s Jason Oppenheim and The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky were listed in the Multiple Listing Service as the seller representatives.
Belmont said he received a call from Nest Seekers demanding L’Hommedieu receive the full commission and contends he was told the broker would place a cloud on the property’s title, which would have held up the closing.
“It was so trivial. This is a $30 million transaction, and you guys are harassing Andrew and myself for an additional $300,000,” Belmont said.
“Any suggestion that anyone at Nest Seekers improperly threatened or pressured the seller is categorically false,” the brokerage’s spokesperson said.
Amid the kerfuffle, the deal to sell the home was falling apart.
“We just weren’t able to come to an agreement on where I needed to be cash-wise,” Mazzella, the interested buyer, said. “Bo did not accept the couple of different offers and scenarios I made to buy it cash.”
Belmont blames himself for not doing due diligence on Mazzella’s finances. “We would have absolutely never entertained an offer from Andrew,” he said.
Yet Mazzella couldn’t walk away. His $600,000 deposit was secured by its own deed of trust on the property.
At the beginning of 2026, Mazzella and Belmont met to talk about the possibility of Mazzella Ventures somehow being brought on as a general contractor or property manager to finish the project.
“He had been expressing an urge to continue to buy [the home],” Belmont said, casting the meeting as a favor. “You can want a whole bunch, but when you just don’t have the ability, that want is fruitless.”
Mazzella was hatching an alternate plan. He was going to go in with a different investor and snap up the property in the March foreclosure auction. A “backdoor effort,” Belmont called it. Determined to get the Ando, Mazzella and the investor showed up at the auction planning to offer “significantly less,” though he would not say the amount.
Mazzella considers the Ando-designed home a “unicorn property” and remains hopeful he’ll somehow get to own, renovate and sell it.
“Every deal is high stakes,” he said. “It can get pretty intense but at the end of the day, for me, if there’s a solution, I don’t care [about the drama]. It’s just business. That’s just the way I look at everything. If someone’s not able to put behind the things that don’t help the property or delay it, they’re not good at being an entrepreneur because words are just words…. All that matters is closing. If we don’t close, no one makes money.”
As the date of the foreclosure auction approached, Belmont apparently turned to the idea of filing for bankruptcy. He repeatedly cast Mike Nijjar, a prominent California landlord, as the impetus for the filing. Bill Tesser, the president and CEO of CV3 Financial Services, introduced Belmont and Nijjar to pave the way for the original acquisition loan. An inquiry to an attorney for Nijjar was forwarded to Brown, who said MZ has since bought the loan and repeatedly declined to say if the Nijjar family is affiliated with MZ or CV3. Brown was unable to confirm when his firm purchased the loan.
Belmont said he believed that Nijjar or CV3’s end game was to ultimately own the property.
Brown disputed this.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Nobody wants to put more money into a property to then be able to sell it. The idea was to do a loan and be done with it.”
The Ando bankruptcy filing also upset some Belwood investors.
“What we’re most frustrated with is this came out of left field,” one investor, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, told TRD at the time of the filing. “We thought everything was moving along. [Belmont] said, ‘We ordered this, and we ordered that and everything’s going along fine,’ and then I got a notice via certified mail that it’s going to be put up for auction. I’m like, ‘Why am I getting this?’”
Still, most of the characters in this saga would like the story to end; the individual investors simply want their money back, while Mazzella would like to complete the project. Belmont said several times in interviews he would like to get investors their money back, finish the project and move on. A clean break could be difficult given the lack of transparency around Belwood. That’s precisely what’s frustrated the bankruptcy trustee, who called out Belwood flouting its responsibility to provide monthly operating statements, proof of insurance on some of its properties and documentation showing it closed bank accounts opened before its Chapter 11 filing, among other requests.
It’s that refusal that has some involved picking up pitchforks and seeking out their own counsel, a different source with knowledge of the project said.
“Now this is open war,” the source said.