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Monday, April 4, 2011

How Rich Is Frank Gehry??!!

Back in August 2009 I featured 2112 Washington which was a remodeled small house and guest house on a 4,150 sq ft lot. It went into escrow after just a few days on market and sold at a price that nobody could justify as anywhere near "market".

Go back and read the comments from the old post I did. Pretty funny. But buried down in the comments was the following nugget:

I know the owners of this house well. They knew that Frank Gehry really wanted the house and they thus priced it at a substantial premium to market. Gehry tried to talk them down, but they held firm. In the end Gehry capitulated and paid what he paid. Gehry really needed the land in order to expand.


So here we are a year and a half later...

If you walk by and peer through the screen in one area you can see the building permit and Frank Gehry's name is listed right in the open. So he is definitely the one that bought the "remodeled" house for well above market value and he has now demolished the whole thing. So he paid $1.375mm for 4,150 sq ft of dirt. Baller. Guy doesn't give a damn about what all the other jokers out there (including myself) thought this thing might have been worth. He just wrote a fat check so that he can have another 4k sq ft of land to play with.

Kudos to the seller for being smart enough to price it well above market knowing that they would get paid off. Makes you wonder if they could have priced it even higher!

Money is a great tool. Gehry obviously has lots of it. So kudos to him as well for knowing and getting what he wants with just a quick stroke of the pen. I think everyone here won...except for a nice family that might have wanted to live in that house; but hey, that's how markets work.
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4 comments:

  1. He's pretty rich - tens of millions. Wasn't always, though. He barely scraped by in the early days. Kudos to him.

    This may be a consolation prize for him after abandoning plans to build a compound for his family on a block-sized parcel in Venice. He's adding to his property on the corner.

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  2. Gehry wanted to buy the house..on Washington and 21st. St next to the "now" lot he is developing but that homeowner would not sell..we talked to that homeowner one day when we were walking by and asked what he planned to do with the lot..homeowner said it would be a "garden" for Gehry's wife..wow..hope she plans to sell organic produce for the neighborhood!

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  3. I think its fine to do what you want and buy up multiple properties, but why not just buy a huge lot somewhere else in Santa Monica or the westside. The main house here is pretty old and tired looking. Why not go build a fresh compound on a sweet lot somewhere north of Montana, west of 7th. Or on La Mesa or Adelaide. If money doesn't seem to be an issue that seems to make a lot more sense and would seem an easier way of getting more land. Or maybe the guy just loves to play a mini real life version of Monopoly.

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  4. I think you're all missing the point here!!! This guy has earned his money and chooses to stay in the neighborhood he's comfortable in! It's not about glam - it's about being real! He can afford anything anywhere! Instead of knocking it - perhaps you should applaud it!

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