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Rihanna rented luxe Arizona home for $500K a week
Celebrities increasingly rent manses for security, privacy reasons
Everyone has their price, even owners of luxury mansions.
To wit: Spyro Malaspinas wasn’t listing his $7.3 million, 6,400-square-foot Paradise Valley home on Airbnb, but he did rent it out to pop sensation Rihanna when, through an intermediary, she offered to pay $500,000 a week to stay there, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Rihanna was in Arizona to perform the halftime show of the Super Bowl and needed a place to stay. Malaspinas five-bedroom mansion fit the bill.
“The last thing I am is a real estate baron,” Malaspinas told the Journal. “[But] my pride’s not that big. I don’t mind moving out for $500,000 a week.”
Malaspinas’ unexpected, but welcome, windfall will pay for two years of mortgage payments, he told the outlet.
Rihanna is hardly the only celebrity or politician to pay big money to stay at luxury residences — which typically are larger and more secure than hotels, according to the Journal.
In 2013, the Obama family, when Barack Obama was president, rented a Martha’s Vineyard home, which fit a very specific set of criteria, even though it wasn’t listed, the outlet reported.
Mariah Carey rented a Bedford Corners, New York, house for an entire summer for $125,000 a month. The homeowner, Jay Dweck, found a Greenwich, Connecticut, home on Airbnb for $6,000 a month that he lived in while Carey stayed in his 10,500-square-foot mansion, according to the Journal.
The VIPs in question aren’t the ones who reach out to the homeowner.
“Typically you don’t get a straight call from those guys,” Neal Norman of Hawai’i Life told the Journal. “It’s an assistant or travel agent. They open with, ‘I have a VIP.”
While the money is great, the experience isn’t always the best. Homeowners can expect some added wear and tear on their property — Dweck said Carey left pockmarks on his floors because she didn’t take off her high heels while inside the house, the Journal said.
Also, homeowners may be held to confidentiality agreements to ensure privacy.
But there can be added perks to just the money, at least in Malaspinas’ case.
“My [13-year-old] daughter was absolutely thrilled,” he told the Journal.
— Ted Glanzer