Minecraft founder Notch wins bidding war for 'L.A.'s most extreme home' at $70 million
[Update, December 22, 2014: A Minecraft fan has already lovingly re-created the promo video for this house, frame by frame. Click here to see his epic creation.]
Holy cow.
No, make that:
Holy mooshroom.
Notch just bought the most insane house in Los Angeles.
The creator of the wildly popular Minecraft video game -- a 35-year-old Swede whose real name is Markus Persson -- became a billionaire when he sold his company, Mojang, to Microsoft in September for more than $2 billion.
And now, the Los Angeles Times reports, he's using $70 million of his new riches to acquire the Beverly Hills property that the newspaper called "L.A.'s most extreme home." You know, the one that everyone assumed would go to Beyonce and Jay-Z. He won a bidding war, according to his real estate agency, John Aaroe Group, breaking Beverly Hills' residential price record.
He wasted no time gloating celebrating, posting a foot selfie to his Twitter account:
Among the estate's many features, shown in our slideshow, are:
• A $200,000 "candy wall" (yep, the one in the Twitter pic).
• A human-size blue glass grenade sculpture.
• A replica of James Dean's motorcycle.
• A chrome-plated .50-caliber machine gun that once sat atop a World War II tank.
• Fully stocked vodka and tequila bars.
• A car turntable. (That's just what it sounds like: Cars sit atop a circular floor that rotates like an LP on a record player. They add to the ambience at the tequila bar.)
• An $85,000 carved stone bathtub. ("Somebody polished that for many, many months," we've been told.)
• Chanel and Yves St. Laurent fire extinguishers in a bathroom display case.
• A wood and leather bicycle.
• Custom glass billiard and foosball tables.
They're all Notch's now.
The mansion was built on spec by Bruce Makowsky, who made an enormous fortune on women's handbags and other accessories. He put a big chunk of his personal money and reputation on the line for the Beverly Hills property.
And then he hung an $85 million price tag on it.
Click here or on a photo for a slideshow.
It seemed like an insane gamble to Yahoo Homes when we spoke to Makowsky earlier this year. After all, how big a market could there be for such a place?
“The air is absolutely thin up there,” he agreed, but Forbes counts a record 1,645 billionaires in the world. Four thousand people have fortunes of $500 million-plus.
“A lot of the wealthy people have more money than time,” he said, and “wealthy people are getting wealthier.”
Yet brand-new, ultra-high-end houses like his are scarce. He knows of only one spec house costlier, a Florida project of Donald Trump's. Zillow estimates fewer than 50 residences are for sale now at the $50 million-plus level, including private "whisper" listings.
Notch's purchase of the property vindicates Makowsky's gamble.
Good thing, too, because Makowsky tells us he has two more estates in the works. "I want to be like the Four Seasons of residential building."
They'll be even pricier, he said.
