Kanye West sells gutted Tadao Ando beach house in Malibu for $21million – a $36million loss on the concrete shell he paid $57million for
Kanye West paid $57 million for a Tadao Ando house on Malibu Road, ripped out everything but the concrete, and has now sold it for $21 million. That's a $36 million loss. Here's what he bought, what's left, and the stairs that ate half the house.
Down to the concrete
See the grey box between the nice houses? That's it.
No glass, no inside walls, no finishes. Just the frame.
It stands on concrete stilts in the sand. Someone in the comments said it looks like an abandoned parking garage, and I can't unsee it.
The numbers
4,021 square feet, 4 beds, 5 baths. On paper. Right now there aren't any bedrooms to count.
He asked $53 million for the shell. Arvin Haddad, whose tour this is, reckoned it was worth $16 million tops in this state, and no more than $24 million back when Kanye bought it. So $21 million actually beat his guess.
What he bought
Here's the house before. Poured concrete stairs, and they're enormous.
A whole wall of glass and nothing but water on the other side.
Purple daybeds over the beach. Not my colour, but I'd sit there.
Trying to sell a shell
Jason Oppenheim from Selling Sunset got the listing. Tough one to stage.
Street side. One slit window and a wooden garage door. "Looks like a prison," one viewer wrote, adding they'd be lucky to get $23M. Not far off.
It's on Malibu Road, not PCH, which is most of the reason these lots cost what they do.
A black tarp hanging off the bottom floor. For $53 million. Another commenter mentioned a $1 million contractor's lien on top of that.
Before and now
Same street wall before the gut job, Range Rover in the drive.
And now. Seeing these two back to back is rough.
Wrong spot for an Ando
Arvin's big point: Ando's concrete works when there's nature around it. This one's his house in Monterrey, Mexico.
Malibu Road is a tight row of houses packed shoulder to shoulder. A viewer called it an RV park. Harsh, but I see it.
The yellow line is the whole lot. 5,674 square feet. You could pass your neighbour a coffee through the window.
Arvin hates these stairs. He says they swallow almost half the 4,000 square feet. Gorgeous, though, and I'd have a hard time ripping them out either.
The door
A pivot door that swings open toward the surf. I'd have kept this.
Kanye's out $36 million and somebody else gets to decide what goes back inside. I'd start with that door.
