Jay Belson Luxury Development is seeking $45 million for this Beverly Hills seven-bedroom spec home. Construction begins in March.
Rendering: Shubin and Donaldson, architects

 

Douglas Elliman Real Estate is asking $36 million for this build Bal Harbour spec home ($43 if the new owner also takes possession of the 55-foot VanDutch yacht berthed at the dock, a Warhol silk screen and a 1948 Jaguar XK120 in the garage). Note: Warhol's former Oceanside "estate" (a 1930s fishing village with cottages and a main home) in Montauk just sold for $50 million, a record for Montauk real estate.

Coco (Gabrielle) Channel is said to have remarked, "There are people who have money, and people who are rich." Was she referring to levels of wealth, or that some are rich in nonmonetary way? Don't know the back-story, but let's hope she meant the latter.

For us regular folks, the non-one-percenters, buying a home, if one is fortunate enough to do so, is the purchase of a lifetime. Such a home is most often a used home, one that may need the roof replaced, that has old plumbing that will soon cause problems, and a kitchen that begs for remodeled. The landscape, of course, would greatly benefit from the attention of a landscape architect.

Now the one-percenters tend to buy new homes; their richer brethren, the .001 percenters, however, don't buy "off the rack." They tend to buy spec homes, a custom designed one-of-a-kind abodes, hors de hoi polloi.

Note: In the U.S., there are 1.4 million households in the 1 percent (.01) income group. They earn on average $1.3 million. There are, however, 1,361 households in an even more elite group, the one-in-one thousand (.001) who earn on average $161 million. (Those numbers are from the IRS in 2012.) There is a map https://tinyurl.com/nglenlg of the states that indicates what one must earn in each state to be in the one percenter club.

As we go to press, two spec homes are in the news: one in Beverly Hills, and one in Miami.

Jay Belson Luxury Development, which began in 2009 and specializes in developing luxury estate properties in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills and "above the Sunset Strip," is demolishing a Beverly Hills home and building a $45 million spec home beginning in March 2016. The developers bought the property for $8.05 million.

The 15,600 sq. ft., seven-bedroom home will be situated on a half-acre promontory with ocean, city and canyon views. Plans call for a master bedroom with a private terrace, a built-in hot tub and outdoor fireplace, and a breakfast bar with the iPad-controlled coffee station. Amenities will include a two-lane indoor bowling alley, a 20-seat home theater, a gym with lockers and a massage room. The developers will sell the home fully furnished.

The other spec home is already built, and on the other coastline. This 13,800 sq. ft. Bal Harbour, Fla., waterfront home has seven bedrooms, staff quarters, a large outdoor dining and entertaining space, a bay-front 70-foot-long infinity-edge pool, a private dock, two interior courtyards, each with a koi pond, terraces, a roof deck with a Jacuzzi and fire pit. Technology in the home includes a front door that only opens upon facial recognition.