--- title: "The One: Inside the $500 Million Bel Air Megamansion That Became a Financial Disaster" description: "Here at megaprojects, our work is never finished. And that's because seemingly no matter the age or the prevailing social or political sentiments, there is always going to be another ludicrously large project underway, somewhere, for some reason.\n\nSome will say that today's megaproject is a statement on the inequities of the modern global economy. Some will say it demonstrates the decay of western culture. Yet others will blame one nefarious substance: cocaine. This is the story of The One: a house that objectively has no right to exist, and which was built seemingly for no one. The tale of how it came to be, however, tells us a great deal about the real inner workings of the global economy and helps us to answer the age-old question: exactly how much cocaine is too much cocaine?\n\n## The Half-Billion-Dollar Dream\n\nReal estate developer Nile Niami, born in Los Angeles in 1968, had a simple dream. Well, not that simple. Actually a rather complicated dream. It was to build the world's most expensive private home. Free from the bounds of good sense, taste, or proportion, this home would be a statement. That statement could be summed up as: yes I can. Can I have a room for my candy? Yes I can. Can I spend $15 million on a home theater? Yes I can. Can I have a nightclub in my home? Yes I can.\n\nBeginning as a film producer in the 1990s, Niami produced B movies like Steven Seagal's \"The Patriot,\" and \"The Watcher,\" starring David Spade. In the 2000s, he dipped his toes into the property development business, building a series of condos, and eventually multi-million dollar Los Angeles properties for the likes of Sean \"P Diddy\" Combs, The Winklevoss twins, and Saudi oil princes. So, all around stellar business partners.\n\nIf you'd like a vibe check on Niami, just know that he once launched a mobile app called \"Wolfpack,\" which was designed to help single men look for friends. It no longer exists.\n\nNiami may have bitten off slightly more than he could chew when in 2013, just a few years after the real-estate collapse of 2008, he began work on what would come to be called \"The One,\" planned to be the most expensive private home in the United States, and possibly the world. Its initial price tag was $500 million.\n\nTaking 8 years and at least $165m in debt financing to build, The One was designed by Paul McClean, an Irish architect known for some of the Hollywood Hills' most expensive properties; modernist megamansions like Laurel Way I and II, Seabreeze, and Skylark, owned by some of the richest people in the entertainment business. The properties, which are more reminiscent of luxury corporate retreats than private homes, are rectangular masses of floor-to-ceiling glass and cement, and offer the kind of luxury that seems almost inconvenient. Huge, stark rooms with very little sense of privacy are a hallmark of the properties. These are homes that seem more designed to display wealth than to enjoy it.\n\nExcavation for The One displaced 30,000 cubic yards (23,000 cubic meters) of soil from one of the most exclusive addresses in Belair, the megarich enclave in LA that is home to many of Hollywood and the business world's richest people. It's the neighborhood where Elon Musk once owned five homes.\n\n## Amenities\n\nThe One would put all these properties absolutely to shame. At nearly 10,000 square meters (105,000 square feet), The One is the largest residential home in North America. The entire property has 21 bedrooms, 49 bathrooms, 7 water features, a commercial-scale spa and beauty salon, a cigar room, a running track, a four-lane bowling alley, a full-size cinema, and a large nightclub in its basement. Its 50-car garage has two carousels, and there is a 380 square meter (4,000 square foot) guest house. Below the main \"living\" area, there is a servant residence with an additional half dozen bedrooms and other amenities, and a two-story executive office with a balcony inside… for some reason.\n\nThe main entrance is across a marble bridge over a featureless moat, which leads to a solid marble recessed front door that opens itself automatically in response to a biometric scan. The foyer, clad in preposterous white marble, sports several enormous objet d'art that look like rejects from the Tate Modern. A bizarre giraffe skeleton can be found peaking up from the bottom of one flight of stairs. A series of huge metal loops hang from the ceiling of the top floor down into the main foyer. Niami planned at one point to build a \"virtual shark tank\" to cover one wall of the foyer, which would reproduce the image of a giant aquarium using a custom-built wall-length OLED screen. Financial difficulties would eventually preclude this addition.\n\nJust off the foyer is the building's absurd executive office, which is over two stories high, and completely surrounded by water. A second-story balcony overlooks the office, reinforcing the property's sense of absurd scale and lack of privacy.\n\nNiami, commenting upon his choices in decoration, claimed that the pearlescent white marble tiles and white suede textured walls give the property a sense of \"warmth.\" The main living room is reminiscent of a four seasons hotel, with laughably tiny-looking sofa arrangements forming islands of solitude in a sea of white marble, surrounded on all sides by an aerial view of smoggy Los Angeles.\n\nThe property's blank terraced lawn is adorned with an enormous Morono glass sculpture, which Niami claims is meant to raise money to teach acting to poor children in South America. He claims that the house was designed with \"sustainability in mind.\" In what part of the mind, we aren't sure.\n\nA glass-walled temperature-controlled wine chiller room sits off the main living room, with racks two stories high, and room for thousands of bottles. Yet this is not even the properties only wine room. Another absurd \"champagne lounge\" is surrounded on three sides by more walk-in wine coolers downstairs.\n\nAlso off the main foyer, there is a butler's pantry, a cigar room with isolated ventilation, and of course, a wall of framed vintage playboy magazines to round out the image of a deeply tasteful relaxation environment. An enormous featureless open kitchen includes a fully automated coffee machine capable of preparing any type of coffee automatically, including finding and filling the cups from an interior compartment and adding milk and sugar.\n\nAn enormous 140-inch LED television (about 3 meters across) was custom-built using specialized vacuum-sealed connecting panels that give the appearance of a single continuous screen. An outdoor kitchen holds ice machines, fridges, multiple dishwashers, warming drawers, a rotisserie with an industrial extractor, and a grill top. The master bedroom perched above the main swimming pool contains its own swimming pool with a glass wall, just in case you ever got the sense that there was any privacy to be had anywhere on the property.\n\nThe master bedrooms feature \"his and hers\" multi-room walk-in closets with tiffany display cases for jewelry, and the house has separate sauna and steam baths for men and women. The enormous bathrooms are, of course, lined from floor to ceiling with windows, so that the house's occupants can sit in the jacuzzi-style bathtub, or the glass-walled steam room and see their neighbors in Belair.\n\nCustom beds had to be built for the master bedrooms because king-sized beds \"looked too small.\" Another enormous television hangs from a track in the ceiling of the master bedroom that is able to hide the screen behind a wall or point it anywhere in the room.\n\nThere is also a four-bedroom guest house which is larger than most hollywood mansions, with a separate pool of course.\n\n## Public Venues\n\nWhat would a Hollywood mansion be without a full-scale nightclub? The basement venue has a pool with multiple firepits, another gigantic television, an enormous bar, and enough space for 900 guests. The men's bathrooms have cameras in them, which can be monitored from the women's room. Niami explains that this is because men in LA \"are all scumbags, and I'm gonna change them.\"\n\nThat mission may be slightly marred by the fact that there is exists a red-leather lined \"secret room\" on the property which is implied to be a sex dungeon.\n\nIn another wing of the basement is a full-scale restaurant and kitchen with a pool table lounge, and a four-lane bowling alley. Not far from these is a large \"candy room,\" with several dozen glass tanks designed to hold various candies. Snacks are important if you want to catch a movie in your own home theater, the size of a commercial cineplex screening room, with space for over 100 people, and fully reclining custom-made couches. The cinema alone cost at least $5 million, not including the AV equipment.\n\nA sky deck sits on the roof of the property, where Niami unsuccessfully lobbied to get permission for a helipad. He instead planned instead to create a studio apartment and \"vibe space,\" on the roof from the interior of a deactivated helicopter.\n\nAlso on the lower levels of the house are wine and champagne rooms, additional bars and lounges, and a household-wide AV system on display behind glass, which is said to have cost $10 million.\n\nThere is also a full-sized beauty salon with multiple hair washing and cutting stations, foot baths, and other features. An adjoining health club includes hot and cold water baths, steam rooms, more saunas, and other water features. Two \"treatment rooms\" for massages and other procedures can also be found. Another jacuzzi and another in-ground pool with a mirrored ceiling lead to a gym, and a \"juice bar,\" as big as a typical LA restaurant. Men's and women's changing and dressing rooms are available for guests to the fitness and wellness center as well.\n\nAs if this wasn't enough, the guest house also has a jacuzzi and space for two tennis courts.\n\n## Service Facilities\n\nNo James Bond Villain's house would be complete without ample servant's quarters. The property is dotted with staff bathrooms and butler bars, and an entire separate residence on the property can house a full staff of at least 28 people. They'll be needed to maintain a working salon and hair studio, a cinema, a nightclub, 7 water features, 50 cars, a dozen kitchens, including a full-scale restaurant kitchen, and all the other amenities on the property.\n\nThe One's servant quarters have seven bedrooms, which Niami suggests, without a hint of irony, can each house 4 people. The staff quarters has its own kitchen, laundry room, garage, and separate entrance and exit. An on-site laundry room boasts a dozen commercial model washing machines and dryers. All told, the carrying costs of maintaining and staffing such a property would be in the millions of dollars per month.\n\n## The End of a Dream\n\nNile Niami originally listed this house for sale for $500 million. But there were problems even before it was finished. Though Niami had called \"The One,\" his life's mission, by 2017 the property was drowning in debt. Despite interest from the media, it seems no one was interested in this enormous but tacky property. Niami toyed with the idea of selling it to a Hollywood studio for use as a filming location. No deals were struck.\n\nBy 2021, Niami had defaulted on over $165 million in investor loans, as well as over $1 million in unpaid taxes and materials. Niami's investors turned to a property management firm to try to finish and sell off \"The One,\" and recoup some of their investment. The house was eventually listed for $295 million, a step down from $500 million. However, even at this discount, the house didn't sell.\n\nFinally, in 2022, Richard Saghian, the owner of Fashion Nova, a fast fashion brand, bought the house for just $141 million at auction — about $24 million less than the property had originally cost to build.\n\n## The Weird Economics of Real Estate\n\nIt bears questioning how such a property ever came to exist in the first place. Surely investors had to have been aware that there would be minimal demand for a house that has a dedicated candy room, nightclub, and sex dungeon.\n\nWell, for an explanation, we have to look to the bizarre economics of high-end real estate in America, and particularly white hot property markets like Belair, Manhattan, and South London. In these enclaves of mega-wealth, properties function less as places to live, than as a convenient means of storing and transferring wealth to one's family and business associates. Properties like The One and countless other megamansions and mega-condos that dot the most expensive property markets in the world, are little more than high-value poker chips in the game of extreme wealth.\n\nA real-estate investment is convenient for wealth storage because unlike a financial asset, the soft market and forgiving tax laws surrounding real estate can be manipulated in favor of the super rich, who can perform all kinds of financial trickery to reduce their tax bills and hide their wealth. Properties like The One, are bought by so called \"blind\" LLCs or holding companies, the owners of which are often not publicly listed or even known by tax authorities. In this way, huge amounts of income can be written off as \"expenses\" in maintaining luxurious properties, and properties can be bought and sold between the super-rich without tipping off the government as to where the money ultimately comes from, and whether or not the money was ever obtained legally.\n\nA super-rich tycoon could purchase a property like The One through an LLC, and then \"rent\" the property from themselves, writing off the cost of the rental from their taxable income, while sheltering their wealth in the LLC, which can claim losses and expenses that exceed the income from the rental, allowing the person to skip out on potentially tens of millions of dollars in taxes. It is exactly this kind of financial engineering that real estate moguls like Donald Trump have taken advantage of to avoid enormous tax bills.\n\nSo, while a property like The One is undisputably great fodder for takedown videos on YouTube, the truth of the matter is that they often represent a far darker and more insidious truth about the function of the modern economy and real estate. The One may have been a financial failure for its original backers, but it will continue to serve its purpose for its future owners. And, of course, it's nice to also have a sex dungeon on the property, just in case.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The One, a 105,000-square-foot mansion, was built by Nile Niami to be the most expensive private home.\n- The property features extravagant amenities like a nightclub, cinema, and multiple pools, designed to display wealth.\n- Despite its initial $500 million price tag, The One struggled to sell and was eventually bought for $141 million.\n- High-end real estate in areas like Belair often serves as a means for the super-rich to store and transfer wealth.\n- The One's financial troubles highlight the risks and complexities of investing in ultra-luxury real estate projects.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### Who is the developer of The One?\n\nThe developer of The One is Nile Niami.\n\n### What is the size of The One?\n\nThe One is nearly 10,000 square meters (105,000 square feet).\n\n### How many bedrooms and bathrooms does The One have?\n\nThe One has 21 bedrooms and 49 bathrooms.\n\n### What unique amenities does The One feature?\n\nThe One features a commercial-scale spa, a cigar room, a running track, a four-lane bowling alley, a full-size cinema, a large nightclub, a 50-car garage with two carousels, and a 380 square meter guest house.\n\n### What was the original asking price for The One?\n\nThe original asking price for The One was $500 million.\n\n### Who is the architect of The One?\n\nThe architect of The One is Paul McClean.\n\n### What is the significance of the property's name, The One?\n\nThe name The One signifies Niami's goal to build the world's most expensive private home.\n\n### What is the current owner of The One?\n\nThe current owner of The One is Richard Saghian, the owner of Fashion Nova.\n\n### What was the final auction price for The One?\n\nThe final auction price for The One was $141 million.\n\n### What is the purpose of properties like The One in the real estate market?\n\nProperties like The One serve as a means of storing and transferring wealth, often used for tax avoidance and financial engineering by the super-rich.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original MegaProjects video: The One: The Ludicrous Bel Air Home that No One Wants](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXoRmVcQFwE)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Ricardo_Karam_Speech_in_Los_Angeles%2C_2023.jpg) by Alaraby TV / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://megaprojects.pub/article/the-one-ludicrous-bel-air-home-no-one-wants.md canonical: https://megaprojects.pub/article/the-one-ludicrous-bel-air-home-no-one-wants datePublished: 2023-02-18 dateModified: 2026-07-28 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://megaprojects.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: MegaProjects image: "https://media.megaprojects.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,height=338,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/wXoRmVcQFwE/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: f6d63d42c158134d4ee2f7202f1bae88900bccd06cd04257a08bc04d98c80790 tokens: 4181 summaryUrl: https://megaprojects.pub/article/the-one-ludicrous-bel-air-home-no-one-wants.md.summary.md --- Here at megaprojects, our work is never finished. And that's because seemingly no matter the age or the prevailing social or political sentiments, there is always going to be another ludicrously large project underway, somewhere, for some reason. Some will say that today's megaproject is a statement on the inequities of the modern global economy. Some will say it demonstrates the decay of western culture. Yet others will blame one nefarious substance: cocaine. This is the story of The One: a house that objectively has no right to exist, and which was built seemingly for no one. The tale of how it came to be, however, tells us a great deal about the real inner workings of the global economy and helps us to answer the age-old question: exactly how much cocaine is too much cocaine? ## The Half-Billion-Dollar Dream Real estate developer Nile Niami, born in Los Angeles in 1968, had a simple dream. Well, not that simple. Actually a rather complicated dream. It was to build the world's most expensive private home. Free from the bounds of good sense, taste, or proportion, this home would be a statement. That statement could be summed up as: yes I can. Can I have a room for my candy? Yes I can. Can I spend $15 million on a home theater? Yes I can. Can I have a nightclub in my home? Yes I can. Beginning as a film producer in the 1990s, Niami produced B movies like Steven Seagal's "The Patriot," and "The Watcher," starring David Spade. In the 2000s, he dipped his toes into the property development business, building a series of condos, and eventually multi-million dollar Los Angeles properties for the likes of Sean "P Diddy" Combs, The Winklevoss twins, and Saudi oil princes. So, all around stellar business partners. If you'd like a vibe check on Niami, just know that he once launched a mobile app called "Wolfpack," which was designed to help single men look for friends. It no longer exists. Niami may have bitten off slightly more than he could chew when in 2013, just a few years after the real-estate collapse of 2008, he began work on what would come to be called "The One," planned to be the most expensive private home in the United States, and possibly the world. Its initial price tag was $500 million. Taking 8 years and at least $165m in debt financing to build, The One was designed by Paul McClean, an Irish architect known for some of the Hollywood Hills' most expensive properties; modernist megamansions like Laurel Way I and II, Seabreeze, and Skylark, owned by some of the richest people in the entertainment business. The properties, which are more reminiscent of luxury corporate retreats than private homes, are rectangular masses of floor-to-ceiling glass and cement, and offer the kind of luxury that seems almost inconvenient. Huge, stark rooms with very little sense of privacy are a hallmark of the properties. These are homes that seem more designed to display wealth than to enjoy it. Excavation for The One displaced 30,000 cubic yards (23,000 cubic meters) of soil from one of the most exclusive addresses in Belair, the megarich enclave in LA that is home to many of Hollywood and the business world's richest people. It's the neighborhood where Elon Musk once owned five homes. ## Amenities The One would put all these properties absolutely to shame. At nearly 10,000 square meters (105,000 square feet), The One is the largest residential home in North America. The entire property has 21 bedrooms, 49 bathrooms, 7 water features, a commercial-scale spa and beauty salon, a cigar room, a running track, a four-lane bowling alley, a full-size cinema, and a large nightclub in its basement. Its 50-car garage has two carousels, and there is a 380 square meter (4,000 square foot) guest house. Below the main "living" area, there is a servant residence with an additional half dozen bedrooms and other amenities, and a two-story executive office with a balcony inside… for some reason. The main entrance is across a marble bridge over a featureless moat, which leads to a solid marble recessed front door that opens itself automatically in response to a biometric scan. The foyer, clad in preposterous white marble, sports several enormous objet d'art that look like rejects from the Tate Modern. A bizarre giraffe skeleton can be found peaking up from the bottom of one flight of stairs. A series of huge metal loops hang from the ceiling of the top floor down into the main foyer. Niami planned at one point to build a "virtual shark tank" to cover one wall of the foyer, which would reproduce the image of a giant aquarium using a custom-built wall-length OLED screen. Financial difficulties would eventually preclude this addition. Just off the foyer is the building's absurd executive office, which is over two stories high, and completely surrounded by water. A second-story balcony overlooks the office, reinforcing the property's sense of absurd scale and lack of privacy. Niami, commenting upon his choices in decoration, claimed that the pearlescent white marble tiles and white suede textured walls give the property a sense of "warmth." The main living room is reminiscent of a four seasons hotel, with laughably tiny-looking sofa arrangements forming islands of solitude in a sea of white marble, surrounded on all sides by an aerial view of smoggy Los Angeles. The property's blank terraced lawn is adorned with an enormous Morono glass sculpture, which Niami claims is meant to raise money to teach acting to poor children in South America. He claims that the house was designed with "sustainability in mind." In what part of the mind, we aren't sure. A glass-walled temperature-controlled wine chiller room sits off the main living room, with racks two stories high, and room for thousands of bottles. Yet this is not even the properties only wine room. Another absurd "champagne lounge" is surrounded on three sides by more walk-in wine coolers downstairs. Also off the main foyer, there is a butler's pantry, a cigar room with isolated ventilation, and of course, a wall of framed vintage playboy magazines to round out the image of a deeply tasteful relaxation environment. An enormous featureless open kitchen includes a fully automated coffee machine capable of preparing any type of coffee automatically, including finding and filling the cups from an interior compartment and adding milk and sugar. An enormous 140-inch LED television (about 3 meters across) was custom-built using specialized vacuum-sealed connecting panels that give the appearance of a single continuous screen. An outdoor kitchen holds ice machines, fridges, multiple dishwashers, warming drawers, a rotisserie with an industrial extractor, and a grill top. The master bedroom perched above the main swimming pool contains its own swimming pool with a glass wall, just in case you ever got the sense that there was any privacy to be had anywhere on the property. The master bedrooms feature "his and hers" multi-room walk-in closets with tiffany display cases for jewelry, and the house has separate sauna and steam baths for men and women. The enormous bathrooms are, of course, lined from floor to ceiling with windows, so that the house's occupants can sit in the jacuzzi-style bathtub, or the glass-walled steam room and see their neighbors in Belair. Custom beds had to be built for the master bedrooms because king-sized beds "looked too small." Another enormous television hangs from a track in the ceiling of the master bedroom that is able to hide the screen behind a wall or point it anywhere in the room. There is also a four-bedroom guest house which is larger than most hollywood mansions, with a separate pool of course. ## Public Venues What would a Hollywood mansion be without a full-scale nightclub? The basement venue has a pool with multiple firepits, another gigantic television, an enormous bar, and enough space for 900 guests. The men's bathrooms have cameras in them, which can be monitored from the women's room. Niami explains that this is because men in LA "are all scumbags, and I'm gonna change them." That mission may be slightly marred by the fact that there is exists a red-leather lined "secret room" on the property which is implied to be a sex dungeon. In another wing of the basement is a full-scale restaurant and kitchen with a pool table lounge, and a four-lane bowling alley. Not far from these is a large "candy room," with several dozen glass tanks designed to hold various candies. Snacks are important if you want to catch a movie in your own home theater, the size of a commercial cineplex screening room, with space for over 100 people, and fully reclining custom-made couches. The cinema alone cost at least $5 million, not including the AV equipment. A sky deck sits on the roof of the property, where Niami unsuccessfully lobbied to get permission for a helipad. He instead planned instead to create a studio apartment and "vibe space," on the roof from the interior of a deactivated helicopter. Also on the lower levels of the house are wine and champagne rooms, additional bars and lounges, and a household-wide AV system on display behind glass, which is said to have cost $10 million. There is also a full-sized beauty salon with multiple hair washing and cutting stations, foot baths, and other features. An adjoining health club includes hot and cold water baths, steam rooms, more saunas, and other water features. Two "treatment rooms" for massages and other procedures can also be found. Another jacuzzi and another in-ground pool with a mirrored ceiling lead to a gym, and a "juice bar," as big as a typical LA restaurant. Men's and women's changing and dressing rooms are available for guests to the fitness and wellness center as well. As if this wasn't enough, the guest house also has a jacuzzi and space for two tennis courts. ## Service Facilities No James Bond Villain's house would be complete without ample servant's quarters. The property is dotted with staff bathrooms and butler bars, and an entire separate residence on the property can house a full staff of at least 28 people. They'll be needed to maintain a working salon and hair studio, a cinema, a nightclub, 7 water features, 50 cars, a dozen kitchens, including a full-scale restaurant kitchen, and all the other amenities on the property. The One's servant quarters have seven bedrooms, which Niami suggests, without a hint of irony, can each house 4 people. The staff quarters has its own kitchen, laundry room, garage, and separate entrance and exit. An on-site laundry room boasts a dozen commercial model washing machines and dryers. All told, the carrying costs of maintaining and staffing such a property would be in the millions of dollars per month. ## The End of a Dream Nile Niami originally listed this house for sale for $500 million. But there were problems even before it was finished. Though Niami had called "The One," his life's mission, by 2017 the property was drowning in debt. Despite interest from the media, it seems no one was interested in this enormous but tacky property. Niami toyed with the idea of selling it to a Hollywood studio for use as a filming location. No deals were struck. By 2021, Niami had defaulted on over $165 million in investor loans, as well as over $1 million in unpaid taxes and materials. Niami's investors turned to a property management firm to try to finish and sell off "The One," and recoup some of their investment. The house was eventually listed for $295 million, a step down from $500 million. However, even at this discount, the house didn't sell. Finally, in 2022, Richard Saghian, the owner of Fashion Nova, a fast fashion brand, bought the house for just $141 million at auction — about $24 million less than the property had originally cost to build. ## The Weird Economics of Real Estate It bears questioning how such a property ever came to exist in the first place. Surely investors had to have been aware that there would be minimal demand for a house that has a dedicated candy room, nightclub, and sex dungeon. Well, for an explanation, we have to look to the bizarre economics of high-end real estate in America, and particularly white hot property markets like Belair, Manhattan, and South London. In these enclaves of mega-wealth, properties function less as places to live, than as a convenient means of storing and transferring wealth to one's family and business associates. Properties like The One and countless other megamansions and mega-condos that dot the most expensive property markets in the world, are little more than high-value poker chips in the game of extreme wealth. A real-estate investment is convenient for wealth storage because unlike a financial asset, the soft market and forgiving tax laws surrounding real estate can be manipulated in favor of the super rich, who can perform all kinds of financial trickery to reduce their tax bills and hide their wealth. Properties like The One, are bought by so called "blind" LLCs or holding companies, the owners of which are often not publicly listed or even known by tax authorities. In this way, huge amounts of income can be written off as "expenses" in maintaining luxurious properties, and properties can be bought and sold between the super-rich without tipping off the government as to where the money ultimately comes from, and whether or not the money was ever obtained legally. A super-rich tycoon could purchase a property like The One through an LLC, and then "rent" the property from themselves, writing off the cost of the rental from their taxable income, while sheltering their wealth in the LLC, which can claim losses and expenses that exceed the income from the rental, allowing the person to skip out on potentially tens of millions of dollars in taxes. It is exactly this kind of financial engineering that real estate moguls like Donald Trump have taken advantage of to avoid enormous tax bills. So, while a property like The One is undisputably great fodder for takedown videos on YouTube, the truth of the matter is that they often represent a far darker and more insidious truth about the function of the modern economy and real estate. The One may have been a financial failure for its original backers, but it will continue to serve its purpose for its future owners. And, of course, it's nice to also have a sex dungeon on the property, just in case. ## Key Takeaways - The One, a 105,000-square-foot mansion, was built by Nile Niami to be the most expensive private home. - The property features extravagant amenities like a nightclub, cinema, and multiple pools, designed to display wealth. - Despite its initial $500 million price tag, The One struggled to sell and was eventually bought for $141 million. - High-end real estate in areas like Belair often serves as a means for the super-rich to store and transfer wealth. - The One's financial troubles highlight the risks and complexities of investing in ultra-luxury real estate projects. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Who is the developer of The One? The developer of The One is Nile Niami. ### What is the size of The One? The One is nearly 10,000 square meters (105,000 square feet). ### How many bedrooms and bathrooms does The One have? The One has 21 bedrooms and 49 bathrooms. ### What unique amenities does The One feature? The One features a commercial-scale spa, a cigar room, a running track, a four-lane bowling alley, a full-size cinema, a large nightclub, a 50-car garage with two carousels, and a 380 square meter guest house. ### What was the original asking price for The One? The original asking price for The One was $500 million. ### Who is the architect of The One? The architect of The One is Paul McClean. ### What is the significance of the property's name, The One? The name The One signifies Niami's goal to build the world's most expensive private home. ### What is the current owner of The One? The current owner of The One is Richard Saghian, the owner of Fashion Nova. ### What was the final auction price for The One? The final auction price for The One was $141 million. ### What is the purpose of properties like The One in the real estate market? Properties like The One serve as a means of storing and transferring wealth, often used for tax avoidance and financial engineering by the super-rich. ## Sources - [Original MegaProjects video: The One: The Ludicrous Bel Air Home that No One Wants](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXoRmVcQFwE) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Ricardo_Karam_Speech_in_Los_Angeles%2C_2023.jpg) by Alaraby TV / openverse, by. ## Related Coverage