Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Breaks California Record; Spends $165M for David Geffen’s Beverly Hills Mansion

By Tom Roberts

Anyone with $166 million lying around could have outbid him.

But no one did.

Thus, the world’s richest man, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, was able to buy the famed Warner Estate in Beverly Hills from media mogul David Geffen. And this is a guy who actually lost $7 billion last year.

But as long as Bezos had his check book out, he figured he would use it. Bezos Expeditions, which oversees The Washington Post and Mr. Bezos’ charitable foundation, is also paying for 120 undeveloped acres in Beverly Hills for $90 million, according to the New York Times. “The land was put on the market for $150 million in 2018 by the estate of Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, who died that year. Most recently, the asking price was $110 million. Both deals are in the contract stage and not yet final.”

Take is as a sign of the strength of the Trump economy that zillionaires are letting loose large amounts of cash to buy stuff. Just before 2019 ended, Fox Corp.’s Lachlan Murdoch plunked down about $150 million in exchange for a mammoth house in Bel Air – the same one you saw, if you are old enough, the Clampett family living in in the sixties sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

“The Warner estate never officially hit the market, but one of the people familiar with the deal said it had been shopped around quietly for $225 million. The Warner Estate, whose sale to Mr. Bezos was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, stands out from the speculatively built glass-box homes that have flooded the local market,” the Times reported. “Listed in the $100 million-plus range, they have often taken years to sell or required steep price cuts.”

“Everybody today would like to see classical architecture,” real estate agent Jeffrey Hyland told the newspaper. “They want substance. They want acreage.”

Overall, it turns out that it’s good to be rich. From Bezos to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, “at the beginning of last year, the 10 richest people in the world had a total wealth of US$855.1 billion compared to US$740.7 billion now. That’s an increase of $114.4 billion. Steve Ballmer alone added $22.6 billion to his net worth,” reported scmp.com.

Apparently, Bezos was slow to tuck his checkbook into his breast pocket, so he kept on spending – this time sending $10 billion to programs aimed at fighting climate change, according to a message on Instagram.