Jeff Bezos is the reported buyer of more prime real estate. This time, the Amazon CEO has dropped a record $165 million on a storied estate in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to The Wall Street Journal.
Bezos purchased the property — designed for Warner Bros. president Jack Warner in the 1930s — from media mogul David Geffen, and the price tag eclipses a $150 million residential real estate purchase of a Bel-Air estate last year by Lachlan Murdoch.
The Journal, citing a person familiar with the transaction, reported that Bezos Expeditions, an umbrella company for various Bezos endeavors, also spent $90 million for a nearby plot of undeveloped land from the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The Warner Estate was celebrated as the ultimate studio mogul property in a 1992 feature in Architectural Digest. The 13,600-square-foot Georgian-style mansion sits on nine acres and was said to include “expansive terraces and gardens, two guesthouses, nursery and three hothouses, tennis court, swimming pool, nine-hole golf course and motor court complete with its own service garage and gas pumps.”
Geffen bought the property for $47.5 million in 1990 — which was a record then for a Los Angeles area home.
The property, which can be seen here, is featured in the book “The Legendary Estates of Beverly Hills” — available on Amazon — by real estate magnate and architectural historian Jeff Hyland.
“No studio czar’s residence, before or since, has ever surpassed in size, grandeur, or sheer glamour than the Jack Warner Estate on Angelo Drive in Benedict Canyon,” Hyland wrote.
Bezos’ appetite for fancy living spaces has him scooping up properties on both coasts. Last June, the world’s richest person was the reported buyer of three condos in New York City valued at $80 million. In 2017, he purchased a mansion in an exclusive Washington, D.C., neighborhood for $23 million and then set out to renovate the place for a reported $12 million.
