Touring a $44,000,000 Mansion in the Hollywood Hills

What's of you guys? It's Graham here. So I'm here with my colleague, Jason Oppenheim from Netflix's hit show, Selling Sunset, and we're on our way right now to see one of his forty million dollar listings up on the Sunset Strip here in Hollywood. It is, I think, the largest house ever built in the Hollywood Hills here, and it will be one of the most expensive.

Okay, so I have not seen his house yet, so let's take you guys along, and you'll see exactly what forty million dollars gets you here in the Sunset Strip. The house is right at 20,000 square feet. I started building it about two and a half years ago. I actually lived in the house that was here originally. I decided to tear it down, wanted to build my dream house, and got in the middle of it. Things changed, I got married, decided this is not where I wanted to live, and decided to put it up for sale. Like I said, I originally designed it for myself, so it wasn't designed as a spec house.

I pulled out all the stops with all the interior. For example, one of the things that's special about this house is there's over 30,000 square feet of Italian stone between, you know, what's on the floor, what's on the walls, some of the ceilings. This is the entrance to the garage, which opens up in here where you can put 12 cars. A 12-car garage! Besides having a 12-car garage, it has two access points. You can drive in from the main entrance, come through the garage, and drive right out the exit right here, or the other way around.

Aren't you doing a movie theater here as well? This is a 15-foot drop-down projector screen right here, right with the projector above Jeff's head. So you can have your amazing cars here, you can have a pool table, you can watch a movie with couches. It's a very kind of unique experience where you not only have a garage, but you also have like a real living finished space. I'm a car guy, so I wanted to set up four cars, you know, be able to watch a football game or whatever when I'm down here. But this could also make an amazing art gallery for somebody if you had a spectacular art collection. I mean, that's the length of that wall there; you could house a lot of paintings on them.

So, Graham, this is the main entrance of the property. You're going to walk into a beautiful front door, right? Yeah, I'll actually show you the course, and you walk across this water feature, and then you're looking at these palm trees in this nice beautiful courtyard. Then you walk right up to the main level of the house. When we go upstairs on the main level, you'll see you'll notice the, you know, the crazy infinity pool.

Then there's this water feature that runs all the way around the fire pit and the entertainment terrace, which then comes through here, and then water falls down into this feature right here. It's set up where you can go right to the elevator, and we'll go see this here in a little bit. But the rooftop deck is one of the largest rooftop decks in the Hollywood Hills. You can hop on that elevator; it'll take you right to the rooftop, and it will not stop. You can set it or it won't stop at any of the floors, so if you just have a bunch of people over and you don't want to trudge through your house, up in the elevator straight to the rooftop.

I started doing this about 20, a little over 20 years ago. I built a house in Laguna Beach; in fact, it was nicknamed the Batcave. You would drive into that house, you go into the garage. When you'd shut the garage door, the car would go down on an elevator, and you'd come out this tunnel and go to the main house right on Thousand Steps Beach in Laguna Beach. That's where I started doing these types of projects here in the LA area. The first home that I bought to remodel and sell, I bought through Jason.

This project started before any construction, before any dirt was removed. The architects, Iota out of South Africa, a very prominent architectural firm, came to the property and set up scaffolding all around the property and took hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. So when they were designing the house and setting the elevations, they wanted each room or each floor, whatever, to make the view the center of the house. And basically, the art of the house is the view.

So, like this elevator, you're coming up through each floor. I mean, it opens up to a different view on each level, and for example, this side, the back side of the elevator opens into the wine room. As far as, you know, the vehicle, another thing I think we should point out is how thin and narrow all the glasses in the house, 'cause I think he spent over a million dollars—I was about a million one just for the glass package on this house. When you are building a 20,000 square-foot house, if you want high-quality stone, it's a million dollars. If you want high-quality, you know, thin glass, it's a million dollars.

I think he spent a million dollars on waterproofing. So everything on a house this big, if you want it to go from a level eight up to a level nine, that's an extra quarter million dollars. So this is again is the dining room, and he created a separation from the dining room to the living room, but not a complete separation, which I think is perfect because you want to be able to see and engage with people and not have like that very formal dining area.

I like to think of it more as a piece of art than it is just a separating wall between two rooms because you lose a lot of the space, the wall space for art. This pool, as far as the infinity edge and the overall linear length of this pool, is 175 feet, which is the longest pool ever built in the Hollywood Hills. So this room, to me, is the statement room, and Jeff, if I'm correct, push a button, and this entire room opens up.

That is correct! The room feels like it's twice as big when all these windows are open. And this is the part they were talking about. This is what costs a million dollars. Look how narrow this is! So many other homes have three or four, you know, pieces of glass, and it blocks your view. So Jeff, you can talk about this too, but I know he spent almost a half a million dollars lowering telephone poles that were around this house.

I wish it was only a half a million dollars; it was a half a million dollars for the LADWP section. We had to hire a contracting firm over and above that to run all the underground conduits, redo the paving between all five power poles that we took down and relocated. Our budget on that now is just a tad under a million dollars to remove all those power poles, including the ancillary work that had to be done as part of it.

I mean, for me, it was a deal breaker. We started working on the power lines a year before we even started this project, because if there was any possibility we were going to be turned down and not able to remove the power lines, this project would not have happened. He spent a million dollars lowering those telephone poles, and you probably made three or four million dollars easy! Easy! The best return on this house was the money spent on those power poles.

Yeah, people always ask me, like, who do you sell homes to? I don't know if there's a more eclectic group of people than the people that buy in the Hollywood Hills. Just show me a bank statement, and if it's got enough zeros on it, you come on, look at this house! A good buddy of mine is in the sign business and builds billboards and signs, and he said, "Let's put a TV in and put it on a hydraulic lift system."

So now you can turn this! So when you're sitting there, if you're on the roof, it'll pop. And then that is, just on the other side of that, there's another deck right here that'll have loungers, you know, outside of the water. Then behind that is that little moat that wraps around the fire pit and the entertainment terrace and then continues underneath the deck, and then water falls over into that basement area that we're looking at near the entrance of the house.

This planner—we had a palm tree in there, didn't like the palm tree, how it looked; it just wasn't working. We removed it, and in fact, tomorrow—no, I'm sorry, Monday—they'll be delivering the Canary palms that go out at the street and entrance level, and then the twin King palms that go in here. We have to get a road closure permit, and then each one of these palm trees that's coming in, because these streets are so narrow and so windy, they can't get a normal sized truck to put four or five trees on.

So we have to bring each tree up on a separate vehicle, which has really kind of driven me crazy. When I first moved back to the LA area, I had a house and had these great views, but I had no grass; there was no yard, there was no greenway, so we've really tried to do everything we can to give this really nice... There is real glass, not fake, guys! Yes, River has no fake grass! Off the kitchen, though, is the entertainment terrace. There's a full 12-seat dining table right here outside.

There's seating right past this; there'll be couches and chairs, seating for another ten people. And then right past that is the sunken fire pit, which will have seating for about another 14 people right here. This bar area right here pretty much looks like it's an extension of the interior island that continues out here. There's seating, bar-height seating along here; all of this opens up, so you've got a really indoor eating and hanging out and cooking, and then right to the outdoor...

Well, you've got your table. This is open right now; normally, this stays closed and just looks like this wood panel here. This opens up, the 80-inch TV slides out. If you don't want the TV, you hit the button, boom, it slides in, and you have the view. You inspired me on my house; mine comes out of the floor. I saw this; I saw that! Yeah, normally people that buy a house of this caliber want, you know, the cooking, the work that goes into setting up the entertainment done behind the scenes.

So this is what's called an invisible door; it's an Italian company, and there'll be a little hidden button that you press or, you know, a device. A house will be controlled, you know, on your phone throughout, and then this door pushes in and slides back to open to the butler's kitchen. Once you get past this door, it's all master bedroom. The first thing you see is Century City and the ocean.

And I think for me, this is the best master bedroom I've ever seen. You immediately walk in, and you've got complete city and ocean views. One of the biggest problems I find when I saw these large view properties is that you can see out, but other people can see in, and that, to me, is a deal breaker for most people. That's a deal breaker! Yeah, if you're private, you're a celebrity, or you just want to walk around naked, you don't want, you know, a hundred homes looking in on you.

One of the most unique things about this house is you could be the biggest celebrity; you could be the biggest nudist in the world, and you can look out over the entire city, and there's not a single house I can look in on you. I love how you sunk this in halfway; it's this very sense. And then, of course, if you want a property, 'cause you just walk another five feet outside of the shower into your own private jacuzzi overlooking the entire city.

I mean, for me, bathrooms are usually the most expensive thing—kitchens and bathrooms, right? I don't think you can overspend in a bathroom. I mean, I know you tried, but I don't think you did! You'll see— you'll hear people say that all this house has a great view or whatever, but to me, the real test of a view house is can you be inside the house? Can you be in the back of a room, and you still have an amazing view, or do you have to go to the edge of the patio or the deck to see the view?

Look at these doors! This is insane! They're like six inches! Like I'm going into a vault when I'm just going— I'm actually just going in to pee, and it looks like I'm going to like, you know, get gold bullion! Hands down the coolest master bedroom I've ever seen! You walk in here; you feel like you're literally on the top of a skyscraper overlooking the city.

Yeah, you're almost nervous! Yeah! Johnny Depp's estate, which is huge, is right down there in front of Chateau! I mean, really, you're honestly looking down! I know you're all your neighbors; I could do half my real estate, I could just point out to my clients all the homes I've sold here! That piece of land just sold for over 32-9; I can see now that's the Stanley house which sold for over 30 million dollars, which doesn't... this is half the size of this house with less of a view, and it's farther east.

You can see all the construction that's going on here, and I actually sold that big white house just for five million dollars right across there. They're building that house is coming on 412; the show we just sold that for five, five point one. I kicked myself in the tail. I should have bought that house next to the white house! I wanted to buy that house too!

So I've seen homes on the market a hundred million, two hundred million, two hundred and fifty million dollars. I've never walked into a closet as impressive as this one. There's not many you'll find that have head-on downtown views and views down Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard. This is the million-dollar closet!

Or feeling this closet, which is another nice—most people, especially, you know, on these bigger houses, because it's so expensive, they don't do the finish work. For example, on the ceilings, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars of woodwork on the ceilings. Most other people just leave white drywall. Look at this LED lighting; it's ridged, it's detailed, it's dark wood, solid wood.

Alright, let's go take a look at the rooftop deck. We're a little over five thousand square feet of rooftop deck with literally 360-degree views over LA. There's a bar going in on this side, so it'll be a covered bar; jacuzzi that side has a—it will have a 16-place dining table over there, outside, outside dining table, and then another fire pit, rooftop fire pit.

And I think we can both say categorically at any price, even near forty million dollars, there's nothing that's ever hit the market, you know, this quality, this size, and certainly not with these views! I mean, you remember, Jason, before this started, you and I, we went— we were going all over town looking at different houses, inside, outside, trying to, you know.

And I say Jason was a great partner throughout this project as a realtor and as a friend because he would come by— you would come by every month or two and walk the property, look at this, look at that, make some suggestions. So this project has been a compilation of a handful of people's input that's been there from the beginning.

So you really do take on a personal attachment to these, probably do? It's like a baby that grows with you, right? And you learn from it, and you learn about it. So it'll be interesting. Is it the best job in the world? Yes, it is! And is it lucrative? Yes, it is! And is—could I have any more fun doing anything else? No, I could not!

So I think all those things are true. But that said, it didn't start off that way. I don't want people to think that you just walk into the Oppenheim group and, you know, you start making a million dollars a year hanging out with cool people, selling amazing roles. You don't just walk into a 40 million dollar house or get a 40 million dollar listing.

I started in real estate knowing nobody! I was in debt; I was driving my grandfather's $700, like, 1994 gold Lincoln that overheated all the time! I mean, I used to have to put antifreeze in because I think it would like blow up all that time! And this was like, this is just a few years ago; I didn't make a dollar for eight months! I was going in, so I was already in like $40,000 in debt, and by I think within the first eight months, I was in like 50 or 60 thousand dollars of debt.

But I knew this is what I wanted to do! I easily could have gone back to being a lawyer and made, you know, $300,000 on year one, but I just didn't want to! I wanted to— not that I wanted to struggle, but I wanted to find something I was more passionate about! And I didn't care how long it sucked; I knew I'd be successful! I just knew we had to grind!

I mean, I think actually, we have a lot of similarities because we were in— I don't know if everyone knows, but Graham was one of the first people I met when I did real estate. We had offices, if you want to call— my office was right next to each other. He was showing his with like four people; I was showing mine with two people. We were across the hall, and he was hustling little leases, and I was hustling anything I could.

I mean, you were making a lot more money than me just hustling leases! It was not glamorous; I was doing everything myself. Honestly, I would get so stressed out; I was working so hard that I would like get tears in my eyes at night! Because this is when I was getting a little bit more successful, but it was still me; I didn't know if I could afford an assistant!

And I tell every one of my agents this: your first five deals are significantly harder than your next 25 deals! And I think you would attest to this as well! If you can get, you know, take a couple years and close five deals, I guarantee you those five deals will turn into 25! But those first five deals are so hard to get! Week after week, I would go look at homes on Tuesdays, go look at homes on Sundays; I would talk to my friends, I would get everyone into my email database, and I would send out emails to all of them, but nothing for months!

I mean, in fact, my first sale was a lead that I got from my former partner. Honestly, everyone, for that, it would have been over a year before I made any money! I think if you sit open houses, you find great clients! I met Jeff Thomas, who I've done, I mean, tens of millions of dollars of real estate with, not including this forty million dollar house that I'm going to sell for him! And he walked into an open house of mine; he didn't buy that house, but you know, we talked, and I started sending him other listings.

And I have met, oh my goodness, I would say I've built half my business from meeting clients at open houses, and then from there, it's a lot of referrals and a lot of repeat business. The nice thing about the Hollywood Hills is these people buy a house three years later, they want to sell it, and they want to buy a bigger house.

So how did you then transition into buying and investing in real estate? Well, obviously, it takes a little bit of capital to do that, so I had to save up some capital from just representing people. And then I saw a lot of the other agents in the business that are really successful, really wealthy people in real estate don't just represent buyers and sellers, but they also do their own real estate investing.

So they buy a house, remodel it, flip it, rent it out, whatever. So I've been doing that for, I don't know, you know as well as I do— probably isn't 12? I think? Yeah, six. That's right! But my first hasn't in 12 or 13. So a perfect example: bought it for 3.5, put in a half a million dollars plus into a remodel, sold it—you know, made a million dollars in many years with a work, and it wasn't that much work.

Feel like one of the things that you have to stay focused on is not getting ahead of yourself, and I don't mean that you're not ambitious, and I don't mean that you don't dream big, but it's baby steps. You don't walk into a ten million dollar house and buy it. You don’t—your first house is going to be small, your first sales are going to be small.

In fact, I honestly, Graham, I think you're a perfect example of somebody who started off really hustling, you know, small leases that turned into five, ten million dollar sales. So hustle! In fact, I mean, you didn’t— you put a property on Craigslist or something like that, Westside Rentals, and that’s turned into now like twenty million dollars of sales, seven million dollar sale, and then now a nine million dollar sale!

You start small, you work hard, and honestly, you got to be smart too! I mean, you got to know what you’re doing! I mean, don’t let this guy, you know, fool you with his charm. This guy hustles, and he's super smart, and I think that's what it takes!