Another Behemoth Bel Air Mansion Goes Up on the Block

SELLER: Mohamed Hadid
LOCATION: Nimes Road, Bel Air, CA
PRICE: $85,000,000
SIZE: 48,000 square feet (approx.), 10 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Dramatic location, aristocratic beauty, incomparable quality. Set on the most prestigious street in Bel Air, this three-story, approximately 48,000 square-foot masterpiece offers 280-degree majestic views of the city below and the surrounding mountains. The 2.2-acre property, embraced by a massive 1,000-foot long by 36 feet high hand-chiseled Jerusalem stone wall, is softened with lush foliage and specimen plantings, a swan pond and an infinity pool reaching toward the endless vistas. Stepping stones and monumental gates lead into the garden?s delightful tranquility. There is ample secure parking for 20 vehicles.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Earlier today, Your Mama spent considerable time and energy discussing the palatial pile in lower Bel Air, CA that philanthropist/widow Iris Cantor recently listed with an astronomical $53,000,000 asking price. That is, without a doubt, a lot of damn dinero.

However, Miz Cantor's asking price positively pales in comparison to real estate developer Mohamed Hadid's behemoth Bel Air mega-manse that has just heaved and humped its way on to the market with a spine-tingling, knee-bucking and mind-numbing asking price of $85,000,000. Lawhd children, Your Mama needs a nerve pill and a pitcher of gin and tonics just to loosen our mind up enough to comprehend a number that large.

In addition to having made millions developing 15 5-star hotels for Ritz-Carlton, Mister Hadid now dabbles in developing property for people who want 5-star amenities in their hotel-sized homes. In fact, Mister Hadid is the man responsible for the lavish mansion on Bel Air's N. Carolwood Drive where Michael "The White Lady" Jackson is currently holed up and reportedly paying $100,000 per month in rent.

Mister Hadid recently whispered to the lovely Miss Christina S.N. Lewis who pens the Private Properties column for the Wall Street Journal that he purchased the 2.2 acre parcel on super-swish Nimes Road about 6 years ago and claims to have spent an utterly shocking $59,000,000 to build the monstrous 3-story mansion that measures approximately 48,000 square feet and includes 10 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms.

Listing information for the preposterously posh Hadid house, dubbed Le Belvedere, indicates it is almost entirely surrounded by a 1,000 foot long retaining wall that stands 36-feet high in some sections and is clad in Jerusalem stone. Apparently, ordinary concrete would simply not do. One of the property's seven fountains sits at the center of a massive motor-court that spreads out in front of the imposing and seriously over-articulated front facade where the entrance is flanked by a pair of mature cyprus trees.

The definitely designed to impress the guests entrance hall has glossy herringbone wood floors and a curving Norma Desmond worthy staircase with dozens of heavily carved and super-fat spindles all lit by an impressively glittery chandelier that probably cost more than it would for Mister and Missus Hadid to feed fifty families for a year, which for all we know, they actually do.

According to listing information and recent reports, the massive main floor contains a reception hall, formal living and dining rooms, a paneled family room with a bar lounge (we'd need to be drunk to relax in a house this over-stuffed too), a music room, a wood paneled library, and a paneled office, and the main family kitchen, butler's pantry and staff room. If the children look really hard, y'all can see that one of the rooms with wildly intricate carved and ornamented wood paneling is, in fact, one of the home's two indoor kitchens. Your Mama was only able to determine that room was indeed a kitchen by the over-sized pot rack that hangs over what appears to be whopping work island.

At least five of the 10 bedrooms are located on the second floor–we're not sure where the other five are–and include three family bedrooms with private poopers, a junior master suite with a private lanai and mini-gym, and the ridiculously regal master suite which encompasses a sitting room, bedroom, dual bathrooms, dual dressing rooms and, strangely, a powder room. Now children, why in the world would a master suite with two living room sized bathrooms even need a powder room? Aren't powder rooms usually for guests? Do people this rich actually entertain guests in their boo-dwars?

On the large lower floor, Mister and Missus Hadid can easily entertain a few hundred of their closest friends in the ballroom that seats up to 250, feed 'em with the commercial kitchen, get 'em drunk in the 5,000 bottle wine cellar and make 'em sit through a home movies in the screening room that features obscene amounts of gilded ornamentation and a ceiling painted like a cloudy sky. We would die like that twiglet fashionista Rachel Zoe if the screening room ceiling changed from day to night like the one at The Forum Shops in the sensationally tacky Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

Also on the lower floor is a game room, a home gym set-up, a Moroccan themed room with a fantastic carved ceiling where we imagine the Hadids all gather to smoke the family hookah, and, finally, a barrel-vaulted and extravagantly tiled Turkish hammam where the Hadid clan can bathe and sweat communally with all their friends who don't mind stripping and scrubbing down in front of each other.

The landscaping and outdoor recreational facilities are no less lavish than the interior spaces and include all those above mentioned fountains, a swan pond–which is really such a bad idea since not only are swans notoriously mean, they poop indiscriminately, a 70-foot long infinity edge swimming pool, a 12-person, orgy friendly spa, an outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven and a courtyard where up to 100 people can eat a casual dinner al fresco.

Additional amenities include staff quarters located over the garage, outdoor parking for 20 or more cars and underground parking that accommodates two limousine-length vehicles, 19 fireplaces all with heavily carved and ornate mantels and surrounds, commercial grade utilities and entertainment systems and, thankfully, an elevator because Your Mama is plum tuckered out just imagining the cardiovascular strength necessary to haul our big booty up and down and around all three sprawling levels of this supermarket sized residence every damn day. Hopefully the Hadids allow the household staff to utilize that lift otherwise you know they're cursing every member of the family every step they take up and down the back stairs.

So where does one go after selling a monster mansion like this? Although we don't know if he plans to live there or not, Mister Hadid told Miss Lewis at the Wall Street Journal that he's currently building a new, slightly smaller 35,000 square foot chateau-style house over by the Beverly Hills Hotel. If we're being honest, and we always are, we'd confess that we don't have any idea where this new house is located. We're pretty sure, but can not seem to confirm, that Mister Hadid once owned a 980-acre estate called Pokety Farms located outside Washington D.C.. However, it's unclear whether he still owns that particular property. Anyone have any insight there?

As an aside, don't the children find it interesting that there are so many so-called trophy estates currently on the market not only in Los Angeles but in New York, the Hamptons, Palm Beach, Aspen and all the other high priced locales really rich people own real estate? We do. Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air posits that with no more 40 to 1 leveraging of private wealth, this sort of excessively lavish lifestyle is going the way of the dinosaur. Hmm. More on that later.