It’s one of the most infamous pieces of celebrity real estate in recent memory: the stark Malibu mansion designed by legendary Japanese architect Tadao Ando and later gutted and abandoned by Kanye West has changed hands once again.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the property found a buyer less than a week after hitting the market, selling for somewhere between $30 million and $34 million.
That’s a healthy profit over the $21 million that Steven “Bo” Belmont’s Belwood Investments paid for it in 2024—but short of the $39 million they’d hoped to fetch. The new buyers, a group of investors led by luxury real estate developer Andrew Mazzella, plan to finish restoring the home and relist it at an eye-popping $55 million to $65 million.
It’s a bold bet, but not an unfounded one. The property sits on Malibu Road, a coveted stretch of coastline that was spared during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year. The home’s monolithic concrete construction—originally criticized for its bunker-like austerity—is now being viewed as an architectural asset, potentially resistant to fire damage.
“With no inventory to buy on the Pacific Coast Highway, it really bolstered our value,” Belmont told WSJ. “To be quite frank, there’s nothing else like it.”
From Ando to Ye to Shambles
When West purchased the four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot home for $57.3 million in 2021, it was a minimalist masterpiece—a rare example of Tadao Ando’s work in the U.S. But West, in the midst of a very public unraveling that included anti-Semitic rants and the collapse of major brand deals with Adidas and Gap, decided to “reimagine” the house.
That reimagining included removing the windows, doors, plumbing, electricity, and even sections of the concrete walls. He wanted to turn one of the staircases into a slide. Eventually, the house was left a shell of itself—exposed to the elements and unlivable. West listed the ruined property for $53 million in late 2023.
Enter Belmont—and 500 Investors
In 2024, Belmont scooped it up for $21 million with backing from 500 retail investors through his company Belwood Investments, which allows people to buy fractional shares of real estate projects like stocks. His vision was to restore the home with architecture firm Marmol Radziner—whose founder, Ron Radziner, worked on the property when it was first constructed in 2013.
Only about 20 percent of the restoration had been completed when the home went back on the market. A team of 40 workers has been on-site daily, re-pouring the walls Ye tore down, reinstalling cabinetry, and restoring the original finishes. Belmont had invested $8.5 million in the project and estimated another $6.5 million was needed to finish the job.
But soaring carrying costs—$1 million a month—and unsolicited offers in the $28 to $30 million range nudged Belmont to cash out earlier than expected. “It’s the same return for us now or after completion,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “My number one goal is to take care of my investors.”
A Fresh Start for a Concrete Icon
New owner Andrew Mazzella told WSJ he plans to move to Malibu full-time to oversee the completion of the restoration. “As it stands now, the property is basically just an enormous concrete foundation,” he said.
But with Malibu inventory scarce, wildfire risk top of mind, and the allure of owning a Tadao Ando original, the stars might finally be aligning for this once-infamous project. Belmont, for one, hopes the home will soon be known not as “Kanye’s Malibu Bunker”—but simply as “an Ando.”
