Photo: Seattle City Council/Flickr
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently added LA’s most expensive property to his extensive real estate portfolio. The $165 million Warner Estate — designed in the 1930s for Jack L. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros. Studios — sits on a nine-acre property in Beverly Hills. Bezos reportedly negotiated the deal with former owner and music mogul David Geffen while cruising around on Geffen’s superyacht, as billionaires do.
Last June, Bezos dropped $80 million on three separate units at 212 Fifth Avenue in New York City’s rapidly-evolving NoMad neighborhood. The purchase included a penthouse and two units on the floor below. If combined, the residence would boast over 17,000 square feet and 12 bedrooms.
Because the New York versus LA rivalry refuses to die (for further proof, please refer to the entire “space” plotline of Netflix’s Marriage Story), we thought we’d take a crack at comparing Bezos’ East Coast and West Coast abodes, altogether worth an eye-popping $245 million.
The Warner Estate
Photo: Google Earth
Geffen purchased the sprawling estate in 1990 for $47.5 million, proving that patience pays off in real estate investment. The property had been on the market for two-and-a-half years before Geffen and Bezos shook on the deal, reportedly without a broker (imagine what that commission would have been like).
According to a 1992 article from Architectural Digest, the property includes a “13,600-square-foot Georgian-style mansion, 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.” It’s likely to have changed a great deal since then, and Bezos and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez will undoubtedly put their own stamp on The Warner Estate.
212 Fifth Avenue
Rendering: Sotheby’s International Realty
Rendering: Sotheby’s International Realty
Bezos is no stranger to the condo-combining game. In 1999, he and ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos purchased three units at 25 Central Park West, a historic Art Deco building on the Upper West Side. Following the couple’s divorce announcement in January 2019, Bezos picked up an additional three units at 212 Fifth Avenue, an artfully restored neo-Gothic tower from 1912.
Rendering: Sotheby’s International Realty
The sale included the so-called Crown Penthouse, formerly listed for $58 million, which offers five bedrooms, five bathrooms and three bathrooms, in addition to 5,730 square feet of outdoor space and a private elevator. The two lower units were sold for a combined total of $28.45 million. Although the transaction was record-setting for residential properties below 42nd Street, billionaire Ken Griffin eclipsed the sale with his purchase of a $238 million penthouse at 220 Central Park in January 2019 — the most expensive home ever sold in the United States.
