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.

Australia’s housing crisis will not be solved by first-home buyer incentives or tax changes alone, with leading property figures warning governments must tackle supply constraints if affordability is to improve.

Speaking at the Kanebridge Quarterly Property Leadership Summit in Sydney last week, expert project marketing specialist Sam Elbanna, property investor and fund manager Paul Miron and property consultant Karla McNeice said that a lack of housing supply remained the central issue facing the market.

Elbanna, Director of CPM Realty with more than 30 years’ experience in project sales, argued that successive governments had focused too heavily on stimulating demand rather than addressing the barriers preventing new housing from being delivered.

“The misconception is that politicians think the way to solve the housing crisis is to drive demand,” he said.

“The reality is that’s not the way. This is a supply-side problem, and it needs to be solved on the supply side.”

Drawing on his experience in project sales, Elbanna said policies designed to help first-home buyers often had unintended consequences, pointing to previous grants that ultimately flowed through to higher property prices.

Instead, he said developers were facing increasing red tape, approval delays and rising costs, which were discouraging new housing supply.

“In the absence of stock, demand exceeds supply,” he said.

Miron, a Co-Founder and Fund Manager of Msquared Capital, said the housing debate had become overly focused on tax policy while overlooking broader structural issues.

He argued that affordability challenges stemmed from a combination of factors, including planning constraints, supply shortages, migration levels and interest rates.

“No-one can be 100 per cent certain on the real reason for property prices is going up,” he said.

“The reason why property prices are higher is a combination of interest rates, lack of supply, migration, vacancy rates and maybe taxes play a role.”

Miron was critical of recent federal housing policy changes, warning they could reduce the number of new homes being built and further constrain supply that was even highlighted in the budget.

He also highlighted the importance of the property sector to the broader economy, noting that residential real estate and related industries employed more than one million Australians.

McNeice, who advises developers on sales strategy and market intelligence, said understanding buyers had become increasingly important as affordability pressures intensified.

While affordability remained a major consideration, she said today’s buyers were focused on value rather than simply price.

“People are looking for value for money,” she said.

She said buyers were increasingly evaluating factors such as transport connections, walkability, nearby amenities and flexible living spaces that could accommodate changing family needs.

“What infrastructure is going on? Can I walk to the shops? Can I meet people at the local cafe?” she said.

The panel also discussed the mounting pressures facing developers, with Elbanna arguing that many projects become financially unviable from the moment a site is purchased.

“The viability of a development happens at the moment the site is bought,” he said.

He said rising construction costs, higher interest rates and overly optimistic feasibility assumptions had left some developers exposed as market conditions changed.

While acknowledging the growing number of smaller and first-time developers entering the market, Elbanna said property development required expertise across finance, construction, marketing and legal disciplines.

“It is actually a business that requires a level of expertise,” he said.

Looking ahead, the panel agreed opportunities remained in the market despite current challenges.

Miron said property should continue to be viewed as a long-term investment and cautioned against trying to time short-term market movements.

McNeice said success would increasingly depend on identifying projects that genuinely met changing buyer expectations.

Elbanna said affordable housing remained achievable, but developers needed to deliver more than just homes.

“We can provide affordable housing in this country,” he said.

“But we’ve got to wrap that affordable housing with the things that people want.”

As Australia’s housing affordability debate intensifies, the panellists agreed on one point: without a meaningful increase in housing supply, demand-side measures alone are unlikely to solve the nation’s property challenges.

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.

Australia’s housing affordability crisis is being fuelled by chronic undersupply, planning delays and rising development costs, as politicians continue to focus on the wrong solutions.