Inside the world’s most expensive home: a Bel Air giga-mansion with 20 bedrooms, a nightclub and a £360m price tag
The brand-new pad, nestled in the iconic Bel Air neighbourhood, is expected to become the most expensive house ever sold when it hits the market later this year... if only there was a buyer out there who could afford it
WITH 20 bedrooms, jellyfish tanks for walls and its own built-in nightclub, it's not hard to see why this LA mansion is being called "The One".
The brand-new pad, nestled in the iconic Bel Air neighbourhood, is expected to become the most expensive house ever sold when it hits the market later this year... if only there was a buyer out there who could afford it.
When you stand on the roof, you're swept away by stunning views of the Pacific on one side and the city's leafy suburbs on the other, looking down on the smaller mansions nestled among the greenery.
Angular marble walls and airy glass panels meet the eye wherever you look - it's a sleek, minimalist-style home which puts even the flashest pads in the hills of Bel Air to shame.
But you'll need more than just a few million if you want to call this incredible gaff home... in fact, its $500m (£360m) price tag will prove a little off-putting for all but the wealthiest members of the LA elite.
Anything near its asking price would make it the priciest pad ever sold, eclipsing both the US record - a $137m (£99m) home in the Hamptons - and the world record - $300m (£217m) for a French chateaux bought by a Saudi prince. The UK record is held by a £90 million apartment in swanky Knightsbridge.
Mind you, you'd get a lot of bang for your buck.
At twice the size of the White House, The One's 100,000-square-foot floor plan is so impressive that it's technically not even a mansion: it's a giga-mansion.
It will come complete with a four-lane bowling alley, a home cinema which makes your local Odeon look like a school film club and four separate swimming pools... well, five - if you count the moat.
The neighbours are interesting too: you've got Jennifer Aniston just down the road, and Elon Musk's bachelor pad is close enough that you won't need one of his rockets if you want to pop in and borrow some sugar.
The architect behind the project is Paul McClean, a Hollywood designer whose recent clients include modern-day princes and princesses of Bel Air, Bitcoin billionaires like the Winklevoss twins and style icons like Calvin Klein.
But he's outdone himself on The One. It's a home unlike any other and that's precisely the point.
The developer, a flash property tycoon called Niles Niami, knows he's taken a punt by building such an opulent pad.
He splashed $28m on the land alone, swooping in before LA tightened its property regulations - making it unlikely that the city will see another giga-mansion on this scale.
But house hunters with $500m burning a hole in their pocket are hard to come by, even in the meandering hills of Bel Air, where a home with an eight-digit price tag counts as affordable.
You can probably picture a typical buyer for a house like this: a slick billionaire at the top of their game, probably a juggernaut in the tech or oil sector - or a property tycoon looking to expand the portfolio.
However, The One's 30-car garage, full-size staff quarters and in-house casino will probably be a bit much for all but the top 0.1 per cent of the top 0.1 per cent.
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Talking about the incredible home with , developer Niles has one word to describe his creation: "badass".
"I don't think it's cheeky," he says, when he's asked about The One's very deliberate name. "I think it's true."
He may believe he's flogging the world's most badass house, but he'll have to wait until later in the year to find out whether anyone will pay enough to make it the most expensive.