The Malibu Mansion Abandoned by Kanye West Is Hitting the Market Again

In September 2024, crowdfunding entrepreneur Steven “Bo” Belmont paid $21 million for a Tadao Ando-designed house in Malibu, Calif., that rapper Kanye West had purchased, gutted and abandoned, promising to restore it back to its original state.

Now, with the renovation in full swing, Belmont is putting the beachfront property back on the market for $39 million. If he doesn’t find an appealing offer, he’ll list the property for between $55 million and $65 million closer to completion, he said.

Belmont is continuing with construction, and expects the project to be done in early 2026. But he would make as much money for his investors selling now versus when the project is finished, since the carrying costs on the property are about $1 million a month.

And he is eager to sell quickly. “The minute I start going over a year of hold time, it lowers my average return on investment,” he said. “And my number one goal with my business is to take care of my investors.”

Belmont has received several unsolicited offers for the four-bedroom home over the last few months, including a $30 million overture from a Montana developer and a $28 million offer from a local builder. “I’m obviously not going to take that,” he said, “but there’s been a lot of activity.”

The roughly 4,000-square-foot house was designed more than decade ago by Ando, a Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect with a celebrity following, for financier Richard Sachs. West, who now goes by Ye, paid $57.3 million to buy it from Sachs in 2021, then gutted the house with plans to turn it into a beachfront bunker, according to a lawsuit from one of his contractors.

As he proceeded with the project, West made headlines for erratic behavior and antisemitic comments, and brands such as Gap and Adidas cut ties with him. He listed the property for $53 million in December 2023.

When Belmont bought it, the house had no windows, bathrooms or electricity, and was completely exposed to wind and sea spray from the Pacific Ocean. To fund the restoration, Belmont’s crowdfunding company, Belwood Investments, raised millions from investors who chipped in as little as $1,000 to north of $1 million.

Since then, he has done all the framing, installed new plumbing and electrical systems and redone the roof, he said. The glass for the windows hasn’t yet arrived from Germany; it is expected to be installed by the end of the summer, according to Belmont. He estimated the total cost of the project, which is being overseen by architecture firm Marmol Radziner, at around $8.5 million.

Buying early would allow the new owner to make some aesthetic decisions about the home, said Jason Oppenheim of the Oppenheim Group, one of the listing agents. “This house is like a Picasso,” he said. “This is almost like allowing the buyer to pick the frame.”

Malibu Road, where the property is located, wasn’t impacted by the L.A. wildfires earlier this year, but parts of the larger Malibu area were wiped out. Buyers right now are nervous about insurance and the pace of rebuilding, Belmont said, but he still expects long-term demand for Malibu homes. He noted that the hulking concrete structure would be impossible to burn.

The fires were “a horrible thing,” Belmont said, “but to be quite frank, there’s no inventory to buy on the Pacific Coast Highway, so it really bolstered our value.”

Belmont is eager to distance the Ando home from its association with West. “What I don’t want is that type of reckless publicity to be correlated with this piece of art,” he said. “It doesn’t need that type of stigma. It needs to be really showcased for what it truly is—an Ando.”

Ando has famously designed only a few residences for select clients. Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid $190 million in 2023 for a Malibu mansion he designed. Their home is known as the “Big Ando,” compared with Belmont’s “Little Ando.”

Oppenheim stars on the Netflix reality TV show “Selling Sunset,” and episodes for a coming season have been filmed at the house, Belmont said.

Belmont said he has already submitted an offer on another high-profile celebrity home, the property of embattled rapper P. Diddy . He said he submitted an offer of around $30 million for the home, which had been listed for $61.5 million, but it was declined. He has since lowered his offer to $27.5 million.

Belmont started Belwood in 2018. Previously, he served three years in prison after a 2014 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon in connection with allegedly hitting a man with a pitchfork during an altercation.

Oppenheim is co-listing the property with Mauricio Umansky from The Agency.

For decades, Australia has leaned into its reputation as the lucky country. But luck, as it turns out, is not an economic strategy.

What once looked like resilience now appears increasingly fragile. Beneath the surface of rising property values and steady headline growth, the Australian economy is showing signs of strain that can no longer be ignored.

Recent data paints a sobering picture. Australia has recorded one of the largest declines in real household disposable income per capita among advanced economies.

Wages have failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning many Australians are working harder for less. On a per capita basis, income growth has stalled and, at times, reversed.

And yet, on paper, things still look relatively solid. GDP is growing. Unemployment remains low. But that growth is increasingly being driven by population expansion rather than productivity.

More people are contributing to output, but not necessarily improving living standards.

That distinction matters.

For years, Australia’s economic success rested on a powerful combination: a once-in-a-generation mining boom, a credit-fuelled housing market, strong migration and a property sector that rarely faltered. Between 1991 and 2020, the country avoided recession entirely, building enormous wealth in the process.

But much of that wealth is tied to property. Around two-thirds of household wealth sits in real estate, inflated by leverage and sustained by demand. It has worked, until now.

The problem is the supply side of the economy has not kept up.

Housing supply is falling behind population growth. Rental vacancies are near record lows.

Construction firms are collapsing at an elevated rate. At the same time, massive infrastructure pipelines are competing with residential projects for labour and materials, pushing costs higher and delaying delivery.

The result is a system under pressure from all angles.

Despite near full employment, productivity growth has stagnated for years. In simple terms, Australians are putting in more hours without generating more output per hour. The economy is running faster, butgoing nowhere.

Meanwhile, government spending continues to expand. Public debt is approaching $1 trillion, with spending now accounting for a record share of GDP.

The gap between spending and revenue has been filled by borrowing for decades, adding further pressure to an already stretched system.

This is where the uncomfortable question emerges.

Has Australia become too reliant on a model driven by rising property values, expanding credit and population growth?

As asset prices rise, households feel wealthier and borrow more. Banks lend more. Governments collect more revenue. Migration fuels demand. The cycle reinforces itself.

But when productivity stalls and debt outpaces real income, the system begins to depend on constant expansion just to stay stable.

It is not a collapse scenario. But it is not particularly stable either.

Nowhere is this more evident than in housing.

The National Housing Accord targets 1.2 million new homes over five years, yet current completion rates are well below that pace. With approvals falling and construction costs rising, the gap between supply and demand is widening, not narrowing.

Housing is also one of the largest contributors to inflation, with costs rising sharply across rents, construction and utilities. Yet the private sector, from small investors to major developers, is struggling to make projects stack up in the current environment.

This brings the policy debate into sharper focus.

Tax settings such as negative gearing and capital gains concessions have undoubtedly boosted demand over the past two decades. But they have also supported supply. Removing them may ease prices briefly, but risks deepening the supply shortage over time.

That is the paradox.

Policies designed to make housing more affordable can, in practice, make the shortage worse if they discourage development. The optics may appeal, but the economics are far less forgiving.

It is also worth remembering that most property investors are not institutional players. The majority own just one investment property. They are, in many cases, ordinary Australians using real estate as their primary wealth-building tool.

Undermining that system without replacing it with a viable alternative risks unintended consequences, from reduced supply to higher rents and increased inflation.

So where does that leave Australia?

At a crossroads.

The country can continue to rely on population growth and rising asset prices to drive economic activity. Or it can shift towards a model built on productivity, innovation and sustainable growth.

The latter is harder. It requires structural reform, long-term thinking and political discipline.

But it is also the only path that leads to genuine, lasting prosperity.

The question is no longer whether Australia has been lucky.

It is whether it can evolve before that luck runs out.

Paul Miron is the Co-Founder & Fund Manager of Msquared Capital.

The Malibu Mansion Abandoned by Kanye West Is Hitting the Market Again

The seller, Steven ‘Bo’ Belmont, is asking $39 million for the under-construction project.

As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.