Marc Andreessen Just Paid $177 Million For A Seven Acre Malibu Estate – The Second Most Expensive Home Sold In US History!
ByBrian Warneron October 29, 2021inArticles›Celebrity Homes
Marc Andreessen will go down in history for creating the world wide web’s first widely-used browser, Mosaic. He co-created Mosaic in 1992 while still a student at the University of Illinois at Ubrana-Champaign. A year later, Marc moved to California and co-founded Netscape, which again revolutionized the tech world.
Unfortunately, a jealous Microsoft soon launched a sub-par browser called Internet Explorer and proceeded to choke Netscape to death by including Internet Explorer pre-installed and pre-selected as the default web browser on all new copies of Windows. Netscape’s usage tanked and in 1999 AOL acquired the remnants for $4.3 billion, a fraction of its peak valuation. The acquisition was contingent on Marc agreeing to serve as AOL’s Chief Technology Officer, a position he held for exactly seven months.
Next, Marc and a partner launched a software company called LoudCloud which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion. This sale gave Marc the kind of money he needed to become a venture capital investor.
In 2009, Mark and longtime friend/collaborator Ben Horowitz co-founded Andreessen Horowitz. Some of Andreessen Horowitz’s most-successful investments to date include early stakes in the following companies:
- Airbnb
- Roblox
- Skype
- Github
Thanks to these investments and the LoudCloud sale, today Marc Andreessen boasts a net worth of $2 billion .
Obviously, $2 billion is an extremely impressive sum but it pales in comparison to several of Marc’s contemporary tech founders. For example, Jeff Bezos .
Marc having 1% of Jeff’s net worth makes his latest real estate purchase that much more impressive.
According to Wall Street Journal , Marc Andreessen just set California’s real estate purchase record with the acquisition of a 7-acre clifftop estate in Malibu. The purchase price?
$177 million
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
That price beats the previous California record by $12 million. The owner of the previous California record? Jeff Bezos.
Bezos held California’s record from February 12, 2020 to today thanks to the $165 million he spent on a 10-acre Beverly Hills estate. Jeff’s purchase also slides one position down (to #3) in terms of most expensive homes ever sold in the United States.
The record for the most expensive home sold in U.S. history still belongs to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin who paid $238 million in January 2019 for the top four floors of an unfinished New York City building located at 220 Central Park South.
Marc’s New Malibu Estate
Marc’s $177 million purchase price is going to a fashion tycoon named Serge Azria. Sam earned his fortune as the founder/designer behind the brands Joie, Equipment and Current/Elliott. I had never heard of any of these brands, but my wife assures me they are big deals. Sam’s brother, the late Max Azria , was the founder of BCBG, another brand I’ve not heard but is apparently a big deal.
Serge and his wife Florence bought the seven-acre Malibu property in 2013 for $42 million. Working with renowned architectural designer Scott Mitchell of Scott Mitchell Studio, the Azrias proceeded to pour tens of millions of dollars into renovations that lasted four years. When you include landscape architecture, which was also designed by Scott Mitchell, the full renovation took five years.
The finished sprawling property features multiple structures including two guest homes, a tennis center, an equestrian center, a cinema and spa.
Serge and Florence bought the property from Jerry Weintraub , the late film producer behind the “Karate Kid” and “Oceans 11” franchises.
Jerry, who died in 2015, acquired the first 4-acres of this property in 1978 for $950,000. That’s the same as around $4 million in today’s dollars. He bought the second lot, bringing the estate to seven acres, in 1980 for $450,000. That’s the same as around $1.5 million today. So, all-in Jerry paid the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $5.5 million for a property that just sold for $177 million 🙂
Here’s an aerial shot of Marc’s new Malibu estate, I’ve outlined his property in red:
Via Google Earth
I know what you’re thinking. Forget Marc’s new mansion, what the hell is that massive space ship directly to his left???!!! I’ll get to that in a second.
First I want to point out the two homes I marked in blue way over to the left.
Two years ago the founder of Whatsapp, Jan Koum, paid $100 million for the the first of those two houses … the one nearest to Marc. In February of this year Jan paid $87 million for the other mansion, giving him a nice little $187 million two-home compound that spans a combined 5.6-acre property. Jan owns around $400 million worth of California real estate. He is worth $12 billion because he sold Whatsapp to Facebook in 2014 for $14 billion. Not bad for a guy who grew up on food stamps!
The house to the right of Jan Koum’s property is owned by a woman named Tamara Hughes Gustavson. Tamara is the largest shareholder in the company Public Storage which was founded by her father, Bradley Wayne Hughes. Tamara’s 11% stake gives her a $4.6 billion net worth.
Ok, let’s talk about the space ship.
You can see part of the space ship and part of Marc’s new mansion in the video I’m embedding below from a neighboring property that was up for sale in 2016. It ultimately sold in November 2016 for $18 million and was listed in August of this year for $36 million but was removed after only a week. I wonder if they got word of the massive sale next door and are hoping either Marc or the owner of the spaceship would pay much more to own the full cliff side.
You can get a pretty good view of the space ship at the 42 second mark as the drone flies towards the ocean. And then at the 1:12 mark you see the ocean-facing front of the space ship property:
According to my property records sleuthing, that roughly 10 acre space ship property is owned by an entity called “Bill Bell Productions, Inc.”
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the entertainment industry or Malibu real estate history will connect that entity William J. Bell . Who is William J. Bell and how did he earn enough money to buy what might be the most incredible piece of land in all of Malibu? Two words:
Soap Operas
William and his wife Lee Phillip Bell were the husband and wife creative forces who essentially invented the soap opera. Together, the Bells created “Another World” (which aired nearly 9,000 episodes between 1964 and 1999), “The Young and the Restless (which has aired over 12,000 episodes since premiering in 1973) and “The Bold and the Beautiful” (which has aired over 8,000 episodes since premiering in 1987).
William died in 2005 at the age of 78. Lee Phillip died in February 2020 at the age of 91. They were survived by three children, a daughter named Lauralee who is an actress most famous for starring as Cricket on “The Young and the Restless” since 1983; and two sons, William Jr. and Bradley. Bradley is the executive producer and head writer of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and William Jr. is the President of the family-operated Bell-Phillip Television Productions.
I’ve driven by the space ship mansion dozens of times in recent years. I don’t know what was on this property previously, but the space ship has been under construction for years.
There you have it! Congrats to Marc on his new record-setting mansion!
Oh… just one more thing…
People who follow CNW closely may have noticed that I’m mildly obsessed with property taxes on houses like Marc’s. At $177 million, Marc will owe around $1.8 million per year in property taxes. That will require a little over $3 million in gross earnings every year. Furthermore, I can almost guarantee you the fire insurance bill on a property like this is in the several hundred thousand per year range. So every year let’s assume Marc will need to earn $3.5 million just to cover those two bills. Still haven’t paid a gardener, water bill, normal insurance bill…
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Two Years After Paying $100 Million For A Malibu Mansion, WhatsApp Founder Buys The House Next Door For $87 Million
ByBrian Warneron February 17, 2021inArticles›Celebrity Homes
Jan Koum is the co-founder of WhatsApp. He was born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1976. Growing up, his family was dirt poor. Their home did not have heat or hot water. When he was a teenager, Jan and his mother fled to the United States as antisemitism was becoming very dangerous in Ukraine. Jan and his mother settled into a two-bedroom apartment in Mountain View, California. His mother worked as a baby sitter. Jan swept the floors at their local grocery. To make ends meet, the family relied on welfare food stamps that were handed out from a drab office complex not far from their apartment.
On February 19, 2014, Jan returned to that same exact drab office complex – which still housed the welfare office! In one hand he had a contract. In the other a pen. He held the contract up to the door of the welfare office as he signed his name. With that pen stroke, Jan sold the company he co-founded – WhattsApp – to Facebook for $14 billion in cash and stock.
I’m not exaggerating, he really did that at that welfare office.
Jan spent a few years toiling away at Facebook, earning a couple billion extra in bonuses, stock appreciation and earnouts. He left in 2018 over concerns about how Facebook’s upper management (namely, Mark Zuckerberg ) was implementing invasive privacy and ad changes to their beloved messaging platform. When Jan quit, he left $500 million in unvested options on the table. He could have had those options if he stuck around another year. It was actually more like a billion dollars left on the table after FB’s share price doubled since he left.
Not that he cares about a “missing” billion or two. After it was all said and done Jan Koum still walked away with a net worth of $12 billion .
And Jan did not waste much time putting that money to work. He was born in a house with no hot water or heat then moved into a two-bedroom apartment with his single mom. Today, Jan Koum owns around $450 million worth of real estate. And we’re not talking about office buildings or investments. He literally owns almost a half billion dollars worth of personal residences.
Jan Koum’s $450 Million Real Estate Portfolio
Jan bought his first significant house in 2015 when he paid $8.8 million for a home in Atherton, California. Over the next few years he paid $57 million for several lots in the same neighborhood. In total his new compound spanned 5.6-acres. He proceeded to raze all the previous structures and spent $20 million on a brand new custom home. The garage alone at this compound is 10,000 square-feet, which is convenient because Jan is an avid car collector, especially Ferraris and air-cooled Porsches. He also owns a nearby warehouse where he stores dozens of additional super cars.
In September 2019, Jan planted his foot down south in Malibu with the purchase of a 14,000 square-foot clifftop mansion in Malibu above a beach called Paradise Cove. The purchase price?
$100 million
Jan’s home is located in what is arguably the most-desirable area in Malibu other than a private gated community down the road called the Malibu Colony. But even that’s debatable.
To get an idea why this area is so amazing and why a house would cost $100 million, check out this video tour of Jan’s first Malibu house:
I say “first” Malibu house in that previous sentence because earlier today it was revealed that Jan Koum made a second Malibu acquisition.
Sorry for all the video embeds, but I really want to you to understand what we’re dealing with here. So in the following video, hit pause at the 11 second mark:
If you’re paused at the 11 second mark you should see two clifftop homes with paths down to the beach. Do you see the modern-looking home in dead center with the zig-zagging walkway down to the beach? That’s the $100 million home Jan bought in 2019 (as seen in the first embedded video above).
Do you see the home with the straight walkway down to the beach? Jan Koum just bought that house for…
$87 million
Also it’s not a walkway. It’s a funicular, which is a fancy way of saying an elevator that goes sideways up and down a mountain/hill.
We wrote about Jan’s new 3-acre property in June of 2020 when it first hit the market for a cool $125 million asking price .
Musician Kenny Rogers owned this home back in the 1980s. He actually paid to have the funicular installed. And not only did he have to pay the construction costs, when the city of Malibu complained that the funicular was installed without permission or permits, Rogers ALSO had to pay $2 million in fines.
Jan is buying out his neighbor, a 48-year-old Bosnian-born entrepreneur named Sanela Diana Jenkins . This is Sanela Diana Jenkins:
(Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images)
The woman in the above photo is 48. That is not a typo. I just double checked.
Diana was born just a few years before Jan in the town of Sarajevo which at the time was the country of Yugoslavia, today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country. I had to double check this as well because I’m an idiot American.
Diana was in college when she was forced to flee the at the outbreak of war in 1992. She spent a year as a refugee in Croatia before landing in London where she picked up with her studies.
In 1999 Diana met a wealthy British banker named Roger Jenkins at the gym. They married and had two children before divorcing in 2011 after 10 years. Diana uprooted herself from London to Malibu, buying the home above for $21 million in the mid-2000s. Diana toured the home with her friend, musician Kid Rock . She was tagging along with Kid as he was mansion hunting, but she ended up a buyer.
[Side note – As far as I can tell, Jan and Sanela Diana are both unmarried. With their background and life experiences… they seem like a good match, no? I’d like an invite to the wedding if that happens…]
Here’s an aerial shot via Google maps of Jan Koum’s new compound. He now owns the two homes in the center of this photo, the ones with beach paths that almost connect at the sand. The home on the far right is owned by television producer Mark Burnett and his wife, actress Roma Downey . The home on the left is owned by a woman named Tamara Hughes Gustavson. Tamara is the largest shareholder in the company Public Storage which was founded by her father, Bradley Wayne Hughes. Tamara’s 11% stake gives her a $4.6 billion net worth.
Via Google Maps
In total, Jan’s new $187 million Malibu compound spans roughly 7-acres and has 100+ feet of ocean frontage.
The new house comes with a beach cabana, visible above, that features a retractable ceiling, wet bar, fire pit and built-in barbecue.
If Jan ever needs to get away from Malibu, he can drive about 40 minutes inland (depending on traffic, obviously) to a home in Beverly Hills he bought in September 2020.
The seller of that home was Quibi founder/movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg . The sale price of that 27,000 estate?
$125 million
To reiterate, by my very conservative count, Jan Koum owns $450 million worth of real estate in California alone. That means every year he is cutting $4.5 million worth of checks to the state just to cover his property taxes. That means every year Jan needs to earn (or pull from his savings) $9 million pre-tax just to satisfy the tax man. Can you imagine how much he’s spending every year on utilities? And to think, he was born in a family with no utilities at all. Not a bad come up!
- Jan Koum Grew Up On Food Stamps And Now Owns More Than $400 Million Worth Of California Real Estate
- Jan Koum Net Worth
- After Growing Up On Food Stamps WhatsApp Founder Jan Koum Now Owns At Least $350 Million Worth Of California Real Estate
- One Grew Up On Food Stamps. The Other Was Rejected By Every Company In Silicon Valley. Today They’re Worth $12 Billion.
- Marc Andreessen Just Paid $177 Million For A Seven Acre Malibu Estate – The Second Most Expensive Home Sold In US History!
- Sanela Diana Jenkins Net Worth
