Peter Thiel buys troubled Bel-Air mega-mansion for | Real Estate news

Casa Encantada — a 40,000-square-foot Bel-Air mega-mansion thought-about one of L.A.’s most iconic estates — has a new proprietor: Peter Thiel.

The billionaire enterprise capitalist and PayPal co-founder quietly purchased the property through a restricted legal responsibility company at a foreclosures public sale in Pomona in July, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale.

At $130 million, it’s one of the priciest home gross sales ever in Los Angeles — but maybe a discount, relying on how you look at it. The former proprietor, late businessman Gary Winnick, needed $225 million for the property in 2019 and $250 million in 2023.

Winnick never discovered a purchaser and died in 2023, leaving a path of debt in his wake. Records show the Bel-Air property was used as collateral to repay a loan from the CIM Group, and Winnick’s household relisted the home for $170 million in April before it was auctioned off to the best bidder three months later.

The home itself serves as a time capsule of Old Hollywood glitz and glamour, with sprawling gardens and terraced lawns perched on 8.4 acres overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club. It was constructed in 1938 by James Dolena, a Russian-born architect who erected a handful of trophy properties across Los Angeles.

Ionic columns mark the entry, main to a lobby with sweeping staircases under 14-foot ceilings. In addition to seven bedrooms and 20 bogs, the stately interiors embrace a number of eating rooms, lounges and a walnut-paneled library. Outside, fountains and gardens encompass a tennis court and 60-foot tiled pool.

Hotel magnate Conrad Hilton purchased the property in 1950. After his death, it bought to financier David Murdock in 1980 for $12.4 million, setting a national price file at the time. It claimed a second price file in 2000 when it bought to Winnick for $94 million.

Winnick poured tens of tens of millions of {dollars} into the property over the years, tapping inside designer Peter Marino for a renovation that included monitoring down the home’s authentic furnishings and sculpting moldings utilizing traditionally correct techniques. The work required roughly 250 staff per day, according to Architectural Digest.

For Thiel, the home is the latest piece in a continent-spanning assortment of real estate that consists of compounds in Hawaii and New Zealand, properties in Miami and Washington, D.C., and a newly acquired mansion in Buenos Aires.

While seemingly humble, the recurring Pomona foreclosures public sale where Thiel purchased Casa Encantada has dealt with the sale of a number of notable properties over the years, including a prized piece of land in Beverly Hills that listed for $1 billion but bought for $100,000.