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Peter Thiel bought Casa Encantada, the Bel-Air estate that was once the most expensive home listed in the United States, for $130 million at a foreclosure auction, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, Sept. 29.
He bought it through an affiliated limited liability company, which kept his name out of it for months after the July sale.
The auction was held at Pomona City Hall. Bidding opened at $125 million between CIM Group, the lender that had forced the sale, and an unidentified bidder dressed in black who raised the price in increments to $130 million and produced promissory notes on the spot.
Nobody had wanted it at the asking price. The estate came to market after the death of its owner Gary Winnick in 2023 at $250 million, was cut repeatedly to between $165 million and $170 million, and still did not sell.
What Thiel has bought is 40,000 square feet across 60 rooms on 8.4 acres above the Bel-Air Country Club golf course. James Dolena designed it in the 1930s in an H-shape so the principal rooms would look out on the city, the ocean and the gardens, and it holds a walnut library, a lacquered dining room and a pool pavilion that converts into a cinema.
The house has broken the American record twice. David Murdock paid $12.4 million for it in 1980, and Winnick paid $94 million in 2000, a record at the time, before commissioning a renovation from the architect Peter Marino. Conrad Hilton owned it before either of them and gave it its name.
Debt is what put it on the block. After Winnick died, the estate and a Malibu property were pledged against a loan of about $155 million from CIM Group, which began foreclosure proceedings. His widow Karen Winnick has accused the lender of loan-to-own practices, meaning a lender that makes a loan expecting to take the asset rather than be repaid.
The price sits awkwardly in the record books. It is below what the 2000 sale is worth in today's money and below the recent asking prices, and above the 1980 figure in nominal terms.
Thiel already owns in Los Angeles. He paid $11.5 million in 2012 for a Hollywood Hills property designed in the 1950s by the architect Paul Williams, then demolished and rebuilt it, and he bought a Sunset Strip cottage in 2018 for $5 million. Thiel Capital is headquartered in the city.
He co-founded PayPal and Palantir, made the first outside investment in Facebook, and runs Founders Fund.
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