Beyoncé, Jay-Z Spend $200 Million on California’s Most Expensive House

Earlier this year, Jay-Z sold his controlling stake in the D’ussé Cognac brand to Bacardi for a reported $750 million. So it may make sense that the billionaire mogul and Beyoncé have reinvested some of those profits into an incredibly lavish vacation home in Malibu. Per TMZ, the ultra-famous couple has paid $200 million for a supervillain-worthy, Brutalist-style estate set high above Paradise Cove.

That incredible sale price ranks as the most ever paid for a California home, eclipsing a $177 million Malibu compound immediately next door, and the second-most ever paid for a U.S. residence. But you could also spin this by saying the Carters got a great deal — the house had been privately listed at $295 million.

For all that money, the place comes with some very major bragging rights: a full 8-acres of blufftop land with unobstructed ocean and coastline views, direct access to what is perhaps Malibu’s most scenic beach, and an epic 40,000-square-foot mansion — one of the few homes designed by famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who collaborated with L.A.-based WHY Architects on this mega-project.

First commissioned in the late 1990s by Bill and Maria Bell — he the son of the soap opera tycoons who created “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” — the house took 15 years to plan and build. Completed circa 2014, the monolithic fortress was created, at least partially, to display the Bells’ enormous collection of modern art, including numerous works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Marcel Duchamp.

Since the property was never officially listed on the open market, further details are scarce. But aerial views show the place has an enormous backyard with what appears to be acres of grassy lawn. There are also two giant outdoor pools, one for swimming and one a reflecting pool, the type for which Ando has become widely known.

The property has also been noted for its extensive use of concrete. One contractor, Pacific Pervious Concrete, provided a whopping 22,500 square feet of polished pervious concrete for the estate’s driveway and motorcourts alone. A second contractor, Morley Concrete, delivered another 7,645 cubic yards of concrete to erect the house itself. The structure’s interiors remain mostly a mystery, and we don’t even know how many bedrooms and bathrooms there are, but rest assured they are all strictly and brutally minimalist.

Astute real estate watchers will recall that this is not Tadao Ando’s only residential work in Malibu; two years ago, Kanye West paid $57 million for a far smaller Ando-designed home just a short drive down the coast.

And in addition to their giant new Malibu estate, Beyoncé and Jay-Z have a number of other homes, including a New York City penthouse and house in the Hamptons. But their main residence, for now, remains an $88 million mansion in the posh Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Content & photos courtesy of Dirt.com