More on the ultra-rich and deals being made around L.A. – thanks daytrip:
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-otherhalf-20150322-column.html#page=1
It’s not uncommon on the Westside of Los Angeles for people to shell out $20 million or more for a house.
And then take a wrecking ball to it.
Jeff Hyland, of the high-end Beverly Hills real estate agency Hilton & Hyland, had a recent tear-down sale of $35 million in the Trousdale section.
“It was in absolutely magnificent condition,” noted Hyland, who would not reveal the owner’s name but said his client was happy to pay all that money “just for the dirt,” with plans to erect a dream house.
Tearing down a $35-million house in a region where the middle class is disappearing, affordable housing is scarce and multiple families are crammed into homes or apartments — not to mention the tens of thousands living on the streets — is the kind of thing that makes you think the world is about to end.
But that’s the way things are in the Westside hills, where there’s no shortage of buyers from around the world snapping up estates. Longtime residents, suffering in cramped 10,000-square-foot quarters, are squawking about new and rebuilt estates the size of aircraft carriers.
One house just sold for north of $80 million, right around the time the Economic Policy Institute published a study concluding that “more than half” the residents of metro Los Angeles “are struggling to achieve economic security.”
The year 2014 was the biggest on record for his agency, said Hyland, with $2.9 billion in sales across Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, through Brentwood and out to Malibu. But that mark could be topped in 2015, with Hilton & Hyland’s 100 agents chasing a target of between $3 billion and $3.2 billion.
“We’ve sold, I think, 10 houses this year for over $20 million,” Hyland told me while we toured some of the most expensive homes on the U.S. market in his Rolls-Royce Ghost.
“The Chevrolet of Beverly Hills,” Hyland said of his car, which rides like a dream. The base price for a new Ghost is about $300,000, or roughly the median price of a new house in the United States.
See the great video in this full article:
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-otherhalf-20150322-column.html#page=1
I don’t like articles like this. The author seems to be painting buyers with money as bad people. Most of the people buying in the areas listed are somehow tied to the entertainment business. Its well known that these people make a lot of money when they’re successful. What you’re not seeing is that in entertainment for every successful person there’s 1000’s trying to be successful that haven’t made it yet.
“What you’re not seeing is that in entertainment for every successful person there’s 1000’s trying to be successful that haven’t made it yet.”
If you’re painting with a broad brush, then the internet would fall under “entertainment,” but they’re a lot different than those in the entertainment field of old.
Further, Beverly Hills hasn’t been a mecca for the entertainment field for decades. That belongs to Pacific Palisades. And Brentwood… sort of. That’s why you don’t hear that much about it. They hate pieces like this.
Beverly Hills is for old people, doctors and attorneys who like being close to Century City, the nuevo riche, a few rap artists, middle-easterners, and now… chinese.
The chinese are special in that many buy houses by looking in a brochure, while living in china. They’re also special in that they think 30 years ahead. That’s talkin’ gibberish, if you’re an average American. imo, that’s why what’s going on doesn’t appear to make sense, by our sensibilities, but it’s happening whether we want to figure it out or not.
In any case, imo, most extremely rich people are probably not great people. I’ve been around enough of them to feel secure in my belief. They’re all different flavors of shitheads, by my experience.
One of the best people I’ve ever met was filthy rich, but much more often, they’re a hot mess, detached from their own community, sometimes even reality, who occasionally need reigning in.
This article doesn’t contradict that, and it shouldn’t.
Sadash Said:
“The author seems to be painting buyers with money as bad people.”
I don’t agree. I think he’s identifying extremely wealthy people as bad people, and the class divides they create. He’s not using a lick of paint.
Let’s look closer. A decade ago, if I decided to take a morning hike up in those hills, I’d run into people intermittently, here and there. When I go up there now at 5:30 in the morning, it’s a traffic jam of hikers. Even on a Sunday. The Chinese LOVE hiking, btw.
So… what should we do? Open up more trails for hikers so people aren’t almost waiting in line to hike, or close off many of acres of land to make hilltop mansions for people who are rarely there, and gate the whole area off, closing it off to hikers, as well as the dwindling resident wildlife which includes coyotes, mountain lions, snakes and hawks?
The decision you make might give you a general idea of whether you’re a “good” person, who is connected to their community, as well as what the community will be like for their children, or a “bad” person, who is disconnected from all these things, and only interested in the “me, the “now” and the “because I can” aspect of reality. A limited, and base aspect, if you were to ask me.
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” William Arthur Ward
Most of the Star’s live in Calabasas or Malibu etc…
The Development managers in our company actually lives in Beverly Hills.
And the people who live in these area’s, their kids don’t go to LAUSD so great public schools is “NOT” a driving factor.
I should have said,
“their kids don’t go to public school”.