Yes, that’s one billion dollars.
I was going to just type “$1 Billion” but I didn’t think it would have the same effect. Instead, your mind assumes it looks like a one with six zeroes, but alas, it’s not – it’s nine.
A reader emailed me about this “house” last week and I thought it was somewhat gimmicky and silly, but how can we possibly ignore a billion-dollar house?
Suddenly, the mortgage payments on your $390,000 condo don’t seem so bad…
Quick – before you scroll down any further, try to guess which country this billion-dollar house is in?
Seriously – guess.
Just try it.
Stop reading, take a second, and guess.
I’ll even put a series of hash marks down the page so you can’t see the answer out of the corner of your eye…
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
There.
Sorry, for those of you that find that annoying.
The answer: India.
For those of you that simply assumed it was in Dubai, you’re like me, and you’re wrong.
The most expensive house in the world is in Mubai, India, and it’s insane.
I think when most “normal” people read about luxury real estate, the most common question that comes to our mind is: why?
Why do you need eleven bedrooms?
Why do you need twenty-seven bathrooms?
Why do you need 15,000 square feet?
But this property, as you might assume from the price, is even crazier.
First and foremost, this is not your standard 2-storey home, nor is it of your upgraded 3-storey variety.
It’s a whopping twenty-seven storeys.
But that’s not all – because the ceiling height in each storey is higher than your average building, this “house” is the equivalent of a sixty-storey tower.
The house is 400,000 square feet.
No, not 400 square feet, like your bachelor condo.
And not 4,000 square feet like a “massive” Forest Hill home.
Not even 40,000 square feet like some of the stupid-large homes that celebrities build themselves around the world, but rather 400,000 square feet, or 4/10th’s of a square kilometre!
There are three helipads. Three!
Why do you need one helipad, let alone three?
Imagine having people over for a Saturday night dinner, and OH MY GOD – the helipad is busy! Well, thankfully you have a second helipad to cure that cancer of life. And just for good measure, in case that helipad is also busy, you have a third one, like your casual guests might expect…
There are twenty-one elevators.
There is a 168-car garage.
There is a home-theatre that seats fifty people.
WAIT…….
Hold up…
There’s 400,000 square feet of space; over the equivalent of sixty-storeys. There’s three helipads. There’s twenty-one elevators. There are even 168 parking spaces for cars of equally-stupid value in the garage. But the home theatre only seats FIFTY people?
Geez. I can comfortably seat eight people in my home-theatre-slash-living-room, and my place isn’t worth a fraction of the cost.
The owner should be embarrassed!
And who is this owner we speak of?
Mukesh Ambani:
He’s the chairman and largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Ltd., but I won’t pretend to have a clue what that company does.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s a guy that spent about $950 Million more on his home than anything even remotely logical.
I guess somewhere, some place, one man just had to be the owner of the most expensive house in the world, right?
But Mr. Ambani doesn’t own the most-expensive residential property on planet earth.
That title goes to none other than Buckingham Palace:
I suppose it’s tough to value a 300-year-old palace owned by the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, but estimates have it over $1.5 Billion.
So eat your heart out, Mr. Ambani.
Go home to your pathetic 50-person movie theatre, and know that you needed another 20-30 storeys on that bad boy to come close to trumping an 89-year-old woman’s home.
–
In case you’re curious what Mr. Ambani’s house, which is called, “Antilia” actually looks like, here’s the only decent video I could find of the house, as most videos are some sort of spam:
Okay, well, having read all this, I really hope we all work just a little bit harder this week!
We all set high goals for ourselves, but when compared to a $1 Billion house, you just have to set your goals a weeeee bit higher…
Darren
at 7:48 am
What’s even more amazing is that it’s built in the middle of a bunch of slums.
Marina
at 9:10 am
Yeah, this is not a house – it’s a giant mid-life crisis.
However, maybe this guy will be interested in purchasing the entire Trump hotel – it is easily converted to a $100 million vacation home. Helipad not included.
Elizabeth
at 9:43 am
The “house” itself is extremely unique, and visually stunning from the exterior, but most of the furniture is unbelievably tacky. Clearly, money cannot buy good taste.
Libertarian
at 10:43 am
The Documentary Channel last night showed “The Queen of Versailles.” I can’t believe that there is someone tackier than them in this world.
Chroscklh
at 11:08 am
I hear house have basement apartment, for to help pay mortgage.
Cool Koshur
at 12:29 am
🙂
If Mr. Ambani decided to sell everything and become a hermit, he could help solve India’s sanitation problems. It takes around $327 to build a basic toilet. With his money, Mr. Ambani could build around 59 million toilets. In a country where 67.3% of the rural households defecate in the open, this would make a big difference.
*source: WSJ
Jeremy
at 1:02 pm
Minor corrections:
It’s in “Mumbai”, not “Mubai”, though I liked how that rhymed with Dubai 🙂
Also, 400,000 sq ft is about 3.7% of a square km, not 4/10. 400,000 sq m is 4/10 of a square km…
lui
at 9:11 am
A great representation of the %0.01 of the world..
condodweller
at 1:51 pm
David this article smacks of jealousy. I said India before scrolling down do I get a prize? I actually read about this years ago when I think it was in the planning stages. The one thing I learned over the years is that wealthy people do what they do simply because they can. Now some are driven by ego like those billionaires in Monaco who keep building larger yachts just to out do their neighbour, some do it to be different, and some do it because they have a vision and they make it a reality. Some don’t do it at all like Warren Buffett who likes the simplicity of having a “normal” house and does not feel the need for anything larger. If you want a more pragmatic answer as to why other than because they can, wealthy people have much different needs than most of us and do the things to solve problems and meet their needs. Why does he need three helipads? Maybe he has one and two of his pals he likes to have over also have one. Maybe he has two, one to use while the other one is being maintained and his wife likes to do yoga on the third one. The possibilities are endless. Billionaires with choppers probably have billionaire friends with choppers who like to come over for a party. Haven’t you had a party where your friends showed up in three cars? Some poor soul in a third world country who will never own a car might question our lifestyle of why do we need a house with a double garage and a driveway to hold two more. Why would we need FOUR parking spaces? WHY FOUR??Now you got me curious, you should write him and find out what the real reason is, I’m dying to know.
Regarding goal setting, I don’t think he set out to make his money so that he could build this house. I think he made his money first, and then said hmmm, let’s build a cool house. I also think that he doesn’t have a 95% loan to value mortgage on his house.
Cool Koshur
at 12:22 am
Irony about this Billion buck home is that it is nestled in the slums. It is sometime named “A slum dog billionaire’s house”. It has no curb appeal with unpleasant looks from outside. (looks like some different shoe size boxes being stacked on each other)
Chroscklh
at 8:13 am
Other thing Chroscklh hear from friend in India is that family no actual live there. Never move in. Still live in former home – smaller but still impressive building. Rumour is that feature of building contravene certain Hindu belief similar to fung shui – i.e. bad luck live there. Family say “not true, never intend restrict ourselve live just one building in slum”