The One Mega-Mansion – World’s Most Expensive House, With 40-Car Garage

But his biggest work, which is yet to be listed, is also the biggest gamble imaginable. With a price tag of $500 million, The One will be the most expensive property in the world – perhaps the most outrageously decadent as well, but incredibly expensive above everything else.

Production on The One started in 2012 and it’s already seen several missed deadlines and more than a handful of challenges that threatened to kill the audacious project in the bud. Niami, whose name might ring a bell since he’s also the man behind Opus, another decadent mega-mansion that was initially listed at $100 million and eventually sold for an estimated $80 million, never lost hope. He never changed the price tag either.

The One sits on the top of a mountain in Bel-Air, in Los Angeles, California. Legislation was currently passed putting a limit to the size of mega-mansions, which means no other like this one will ever be built again. Designed by architect Paul McClean (who also did Opus), it spans over 100,000 square feet and occupies four acres of flat land. It has everything, from a literal indoor / outdoor nightclub to a fully-equipped garage. Or auto gallery / car museum, as they call it today.

This is the latest in ultra-high-end real estate: packaging real estate with supercars, in a bid to drive up the price and make the deal more appealing. The One is perfect in this sense: it’s massive, it comes with everything you could ever want or imagine (and then some), and it offers instant gratification to the billionaire who’s already seen and done it all.

We’ve reached out to Mr. Niami through The Society Group, which handles the project, in the hope we might get more details about the massive garage that will, most likely, be packed at the time of listing (Opus was initially listed with matching, gold-wrapped Lamborghini Aventador Roadster and Rolls-Royce Dawn). A rep tells us that they would rather they kept some details from the public until that time, but mentions that, unlike what’s been mentioned elsewhere, the garage will house not 20 or 30 vehicles, but 40 of them.

The number is astounding, to be sure, but we’re talking about a $500 million price tag. Even with everything else inside, you’d expect at least a couple of supercars in that huge garage for this kind of sum.

Speaking of what a $500 million mansion buys you, The One has over 20 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. Seven of those bedrooms will be in a separate building for staff, and the master suite alone is actually an apartment within the mansion, with its separate office and walk-in closet, its own pool and kitchen: an island isolated from the rest of the house, for guaranteed privacy.

Everything else is about excess: there will be 4 to 7 pools, a waterfall, and a moat that will encircle the entire property, creating the impression that it’s floating on water. There’s a commercial-sized beauty salon and a lounge where the walls and the ceiling are made of backlit aquariums with jellyfish in them. Asked by the New York Times why anyone would want to built such a room, Mr. Niami seems confused by the idea he shouldn’t put that room in The One. “Because it’s cool,” he finally says.

Then, there’s the outdoor / indoor nightclub includes a pool and a VIP room just like in a regular establishment of the kind. There will be at least five elevators in the mansion, a coat room, and LED ceilings displaying images of moving clouds. There will be three kitchens, one for catering to large parties and one for the family for regular use, glass encased libraries, saunas and wellness centers and gyms.

For fun, the future owners will be able to choose between catching a movie in the 45-seat cinema theater or spending some time at the a four-lane bowling alley. And these are just the things made public so far: it’s a known fact that The One will be tech-centric, and knowing the kind of stuff Mr. Niami put in Opus for five times less money, you should expect state-of-the-art everything. The cherry on top of that will be the fact that most rooms will have unparalleled panoramic views of Los Angeles.

“These projects are designed to bring everything you’d find in a city to the home – restaurant-grade kitchens, salons, theaters. Wellness spas are really big right now – steam rooms, saunas, hammams, salt rooms, which are entire rooms made out of salt – it’s supposed to be beneficial,” Mr. Niami explains.

To those who balk at the steep asking price, Mr. Niami says he’s convinced there is a market for this type of real estate. He imagines The One will eventually sell to some billionaire on the market for his fifth or sixth home, which he will then use as a vacation retreat.

“There’s a lot of people out there with a lot of money – they want something no one else can have,” he says. “This is it.”

The One was initially supposed to be completed and listed in the second half of 2017, then 2018 and 2019. As of now, no exact deadline for that has been offered.