For sale: house in Los Angeles: $125 million

201202161314
Expensive, yes, but I heard the public schools in the area are very good. It's 35,000 square feet and includes a a three-bedroom caretaker's house.

It was part of the divorce settlement between Texas billionaire David Saperstein and his wife Suzanne. In 2008, David abandoned his wife for their 32-year-old Swedish nanny and now Suzanne is sharing the mansion with her 33-year-old former soccer playing boyfriend until it is sold.

The most expensive house in America

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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The Snowden Principle

mccrum

If I’m paying that much for a house, the school is coming to me.

By gold-plated gyrocopter.
KWillets

I’m going to fix it up and flip it.
- ChicagoD
  
  You should see if they need granite countertops. Those are a nice addition.
  - travtastic
    
    Needs more grey paint.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  I’ll convert it to condos
ChicagoD

Rich people suck. Who leaves their wife for a 32-year old? You’re just going to have to leave HER in 10 years.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

Being an insanely rich woman’s boyfriend was my career ambition when I was 33. Didn’t work out. Guess I should have played more soccer.
Mark Dow

A palace fit for a Swedish nanny and former soccer player.
- Donald Petersen
  
  It tickles me no end that “32-year-old nanny” wasn’t enough. No, we had to learn she was Swedish to understand the full titillation of the story.
  - eldritch
    
    According to the surprisingly educational webcomic “Scandinavia and The World”, Swedish women are stereotyped within Scandinavia as being incredibly attractive and highly sexualized. Add in the exotic european element to the blonde hair and fair skin, and you’ve got stereotypical attractiveness in America to boot.
    
    *shrug*
    - Donald Petersen
      
      Oh, certainly, I get it. When I were a lad, there was no erotica like Swedish Erotica.
      
      But if she were a chambermaid, she’d have to be French.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Finland is the gold standard for gay erotica.
      - thezarray
        
        @Antinous_Moderator:disqus St. Tom of Finland is the patron saint of leathermen, self-obscure porn artists, and shock trolls.
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      But his current wife was blond and fair too. I guess he has the attention span of a child. He needed someone new and (sort of) different and it cost him A LOT.
      
      The best part is that they divorced only 18 months after the house was finished. What an incredible waste. It reminds me of the massive English estates that were built during the Industrial Revolution by the new rich which were lived in by one generation and then abandoned.
  - Mark Dow
    
    How would the former wife top the husband’s taking up with a Bulgarian roofer? (No offence to Bulgarians or roofers intended.)
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      Hey, she is shacked up with a 33 yr old soccer instructor. There is hope for even us guys to marry money too.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    In your head only, mate. Swedish has many and various connotations. (Just kidding.)
    - Donald Petersen
      
      I understand there’s a healthy market for a sweet known as Swedish Fish. I wonder if there’s any subtext there?
Antinous / Moderator

At least it’s finished.
- LinkMan
  
  I like how all these stupid mega-mega-ubermansions are described as “inspired by Versailles.” I like nice things and enjoy entertaining, but honestly don’t think I could imagine ever wanting to live in (or own) a palace. There are soooo many better things to spend money on.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Yeah, I find the Versailles thing funny. Especially since they look absolutely nothing like Versailles, which is a rather handsome and dignified building.
    - ikoino
      
      I heard the upkeep was murder …
      - MrsBug
        
        ..or ended in such.
    - http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt
      
      If Neal Stephenson is correct (and lord knows he mostly is), Versailles when built had no bathrooms, a concept which, if thought of at all, was considered rather icky. Then again, poop and stuff in room corners was simply seen as normal. Really might take quite a stroll to get outdoors from many a spot in there :)
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        That’s what chamberpots and commodes were for. Louis XIV would have given audiences to his courtiers while taking a dump.
      - Wreckrob8
        
        These houses have miles of hidden corridors for the servants to hide in and magically appear when necessary to whisk things away.
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      The reality of Versailles is less than lovely when you read about how they lived in it. It was described as being in the middle of a “fetid swamp” and had so few toilets that the building reeked of filth. Guards and guests would go to the bathroom in stairwells and behind doors. Once a year they closed it for a week to clean all the crap out of it.
  - eldritch
    
    Also, Versailles was built as a machiavellian scheme to control the French nobility by keeping them occupied in courtly affairs which necessitated their lengthy absences from their own provincial holdings. Kinda similar to the shogunate of Tokugawa Japan, really.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      As seen in the excellent La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV.
Navin_Johnson

I like that there’s a Hooter’s ad to go with this post.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Sort of goes well with the theme of excess.
Arthur Delaney

What kind of financing is available? I could do a $1,200/mo 10,o00 year loan.
- Arthur Delaney
  
  Hmm…interest rates don’t seem favorable. I probably would need more like a 30,000 year loan which is really gonna start to put a burden on the 8 or 900th generation of my family.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Ah, but think of the appreciation once it’s paid off! All your neighbors who purchased their adjoining two-cubic-meter Personal Domicile Drawers by liquidating all their shares of Jovian Methane Mining stock will look like such comparative suckers.
    
    Your plumbing may need some retrofitting by then, however.
    - oasisob1
      
      How hard could it be to install three seashells?
  - dculberson
    
    Just make sure to get mortgage insurance, that way when you pass away it will pay off the balance.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    You could pay it off by renting it back to David Saperstein.
Cowicide

Too bad you can’t purchase a soul.
- Navin_Johnson
  
  Or taste.
- MB44
  
  Are you sure? I know of at least one that was sold on the way to acquiring this monstrosity.
m1kesa1m0ns

Sorry, I don’t accept the premise that this is a “house.”
- eldritch
  
  ”Complex”? No, sounds too militant.
  
  “Installation”? Nah, this doesn’t belong in a museuem.
  
  “Estate”? Goodness no, might give people ideas about taxing it.
  
  “Erection”? Oddly fitting…
  - MrsBug
    
    Compound? Compound of Excess.
Editz

Here’s a fixer-upper if that’s more your thing:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46312937
snagglepuss

WELL ! Just wait ’til Martha Stewart hears about THIS !!!
Donald Petersen

A three-bedroom caretaker’s house? That’s it? Doesn’t Downton Abbey reserve an entire floor for the indoor staff alone?

Man, we Yankees are cheap.
- thezarray
  
  No wonder our stock exchanges are occupied.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I grew up in a part of Long Island where giant estate houses were pretty common. Think Great Gatsby country. Many of the biggest old places got re-purposed . . . as private schools, retirement homes, and corporate retreats. One old estate in Glen Cove (Lattingtown?) became a monastery.

If I ever won the lottery and felt compelled to build a big house, I’d design it from the ground up with the option to be turned into separate flats. e.g., the foyer could be turned into a lobby, and the upstairs rooms turned into studio apartments. If someone down the line wanted a mansion . . . fine. Otherwise, some partitions would go up, kitchenettes grafted onto wiring and plumbing already behind the walls of the bedrooms, fire escape stairs grafted onto the upper-story deck, etc.
- Halloween Jack
  
  If I ever won the lottery, I’d design my estate to withstand virtually any imaginable catastrophe save for a direct strike by a comet or asteroid. Yosemite supercaldera blows? Nuclear winter? Not a prob–geothermal power supply plus hardened, window-free inner keep equals impregnable energy-efficient house with an endless supply of energy for the hydroponic gardens deep within. Most of the grounds would be a giant earthen maze to slow down intruders; if cannibal rape gangs, a la The Road, try to invade, I’ll add them to my protein supply; if it’s zombies, I’ll stack their bodies outside the walls and burn them.
  
  You’ll know I’ve won the lottery when you see an ad on Craigslist for “forward thinking, long-term crowdsourced biological/social project seeks open-minded volunteers; genetic diversity, high intelligence required; hotness and crossbow marksmanship a plus.”
  - MrsBug
    
    It’s nice to see someone thinking and planning for the future.
  - IronEdithKidd
    
    This is a reasonable idea. I’d rather set something like this thing up on a small-ish Carribean island. I’d have to add a desalination plant to the mix. I’d probably build a tunnel system to connect to look-out turrets and install perimeter electric fencing, too. Why let the baddies get anywhere near the central compound in the first place?
    - snagglepuss
      
      If I won the lottery, the grounds of my estate would include 15′ x 15′ pop-up squares of spring-loaded sod, for launching the occasional trespasser into the alligator-filled moat. (“SPROOOOINNGGG!!!”) I’m sure that there’s a section of the ACME Industries design department who have something like that already in their files.
      
      Actually, my fiancee and I are considering a lifestyle change. It would involve winning that aforementioned lottery and then buying our own private tropical island, which we will christen “Poopoonesia”. It will be tax-exempt and the birthplace of a new kind of governing philosophy, henceforth referred to as “Benevolently Violent Democracy”, or “BVD”.
      
      All immigrants and visitors shall be by invitation only.
      
      We will install an indigenous faith, to be known as “G-Dimensionism”, and it’s rituals will include hurling snooping real estate developers into a lagoon stocked with rabid sharks, hurling all non-invited proseltyzers of competing faiths into the chemical volcano, and a tolerant and easy-going community responsibility-based sense of social involvement. Also walking around backwards (and bare-assed naked) all day. In Poopoonesia, being The Misfit Toy shall be a welcomed sacred duty, not a burden to be endured.
      
      Poopoonesia will include, among other things, a world-class nightclub, hosting bands and performers from around the world – It will rival anything in London, New York or Tokyo. There will be music, comedy, the occasional prestidigitator and I will even allow my fiancee to present the random Broadway musical, although those things make my skin crawl. (NO DISNEY. Period. Ya gotta draw the line somewhere, and the Mouse House’s bloated, cynical money grabs are a good place to start. No Ice Capades or “Magic On Ice” or the Preakness “On Ice”, either – NO ICE, except in patron’s drinks. There is only so much cheese that I’ll allow to be served to my patrons.)
      
      This nightclub, by the way is free to anyone who we decide is nice enough, funny enough or just plain weird enough to make it on to our invitation list, as are all things on the island. Thirsty? Free drinks at any available stand. Hungry? We’ll have snack carts representing the best street food of the world scattered all over the joint – Mexican, Thai, Chicago Hot Dogs, etc, etc – No Deep Fried Anything On A Stick, though. Healthy or at least non-lethal goodies are the permanent order of the day around here….
      
      Think of Poopoonesia as Disneyworld for people with taste, as Paris without the attitude, as Rio without all of the hustlers, your getaway destination for NOT being treated like a corn-fed rube who was put on this planet for no better reason that to be fleeced and then driven off by corporate scum and bean counters… I’ve been to Disneyworld, you see, and “The Happiest Place On Earth” made me want to start breaking things. We’ll be doing things differently around here.
      
      There will be free museums all over the place, dedicated to the arts, both classical and modern, areas reserved for busking and street performers (Although any money you throw to them is unnecessary, as they’ll going to be given the same friendly treatment as you, and all monies will be forwarded to charity) and there will be polite, well-groomed and well-mannered security details who are specialists in defusing misunderstandings and disputes of all types with grace, tact and kindness. And, if grace, tact and kindness don’t work, all
      transgressors will receive a free-of-charge lesson in decorum that they will never forget, as the security details will also be trained experts in jeet kune do, aikido and, for the really stubborn types, old-fashioned alley fighting. (All of the kind of folks that we expect to allow on the island will be, by nature, passionate people. Opinionated, idealistic and thoughtful types are welcomed and encouraged to publicly debate their views, whenever the occasion may arise – But let’s not get carried away here. Spirited conjecture is one thing, but start abusing the privilege and it’s the lagoon for you, chum. And I do mean “chum”. And it WILL be posted on YouTube.)
      
      We’re still working on the finer points (Public Health, Latrine Duty, etc, etc), but I can keep you all posted as updates occur. We’re just getting started, and our hearts are full of love and our heads are full of ideas. More details as we make them up.
      - IronEdithKidd
        
        Jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick, that was *way* more than I bargained for.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        You mean… Edith, you’re not Snaggle’s fiancee?
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    You’d be destroyed the old fashioned way like this guy. You’d get married, do the housekeeper and then you’d be living in your car after the divorce settlement.
    
    Sex beats nukes and asteroids every time.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Seriously though, anyone with the money to afford a garish trophy home like this isn’t going to want to be saddled with someone else’s project. They’ll want to build their own monument to themselves, even if all of these estates usually look the same. So either it won’t sell for ages or it’ll get bought for the land and torn down.
Teller

No reason for BB to post a picture of Versailles, we get that Saperstein’s house is big.
Gyöngyösi Péter

It’s not even that fancy compared to the neighbourhood: http://g.co/maps/ra82j
Layne

Hah – followed up and read the story – it’s nice when a story like this has two parties that you can loathe equally…

http://sipwithsocialites.com/2011/08/fleur-de-lys-125-million-mega-mansion/

He apparently has a thing for insane, swedish blondes with huge jaws. She is heading towards ‘Jocelyn Wildenstein’ surgery territory. And she’s a complete, utter narcissist - “When I’m watching a football game and the players get into a huddle, I think they’re talking about me. They’re saying, ‘Oh, God. Did you see that dress? That hair?’”
jimh

Happy to see there is a cement pond.
And plenty of room for my critters.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Wait until some new fracking wealth family moves in from the backwoods of PA.
http://www.facebook.com/savagejen Jennifer Savage

Meanwhile, half way across the country, kids are living in tents and eatings rats for dinner: http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9694094.stm
- Donald Petersen
  
  “Half way across the country”? How about a couple exits down the 10 freeway?
  - Teller
    
    Off Robertson?!
chgoliz

I’m not sure which quote bothers me more:

- “As befitting a nine-figure contender for second most expensive of U.S. properties,Fleur de Lys features….a library with a collection of first edition books….”

or

- “David I. Saperstein is an American entrepreneur and farmer.”

That’s not a real library, and he’s not a real farmer.
GlenBlank

“Most expensive house in America”? Oh, puh-leaze. If we’re going by asking prices it’s not even the most expensive house in the neighborhood.

Candy Spelling recently sold the house she and Aaron built on Bing Crosby’s old estate in Holmby Hills, not far from this house.

She was asking 150M for it – but she settled for $85M.

And the Spelling manse is a larger house (14 bd, 27 ba, 58k sq. ft.) on a larger parcel of land.

(And has the most amazing attic you’ve ever see. I’m tellin’ you, that woman was organized.)

But this isn’t a $125M house until someone buys it at that price. Lemme know when that happens.
Teller

This real estate market – if it hurts one of us, it hurts all of us.