With his expensive White House campaign now kaput, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg is licking his wounds as only a billionaire mogul can: by splashing the cash on yet another pricey home. The deep-pocketed former New York City mayor has paid about $44.8 million for a sprawling Colorado ranch to be used as a winter retreat. The 4,600-acre estate was previously owned by Henry Kravis, co-founder of private equity juggernaut KKR, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The ranch is located in a semi-remote corner of northwest Colorado, though it’s only about an hour’s drive from celeb-soaked Aspen. According to property records, Bloomberg closed on the estate — which was originally listed in early 2019 for for $46 million — just six weeks after dropping out of the presidential race.
Kravis purchased the property in 1991 and oversaw construction of the 19,000 sq. ft. main house that contains five bedrooms, a wine cellar, movie theater and indoor hot tub. The property’s recreational amenities include a swimming pool, a four-hole golf course and a tennis court. There’s even a helipad and a helicopter hangar, plus two large guest cabins and a carriage house, Additional features include outbuildings for horses and separate housing for staff, naturally.The Rocky Mountain-esque décor contains plenty of logs and stone, along with wall-mounted antlers and garishly red-striped and patterned furnishings. Although it’s believed that all the complexly patterned furniture was part of the deal, it’s almost unfathomable that a wealthy city slicker like Bloomberg won’t have the place re-decorated in a manner that suits his own personal style.
It’s remains unclear exactly how much time Bloomberg will actually spend at his new spread, as he already owns a massive high-end property portfolio that stretches around the globe. In his home city, the outspoken politico owns a Beaux Arts-style limestone townhouse on the Upper East Side, which he scooped up in 1986 for $3.5 million. Since then he’s snapped up five of the six units in a neighboring townhouse, allowing him to expand the original townhouse horizontally. The current compound is undoubtedly one of the most lavish homes in the city, and only a block away from Central Park, with a value estimated to be well north of $50 million.
Outside of Manhattan, the Bloomberg residential holdings include a 50-some-acre estate in bucolic Westchester County and a home on Long Island — in the Hamptons, natch. Further flung, he keeps a condo in Vail, Colo., a horse farm in Wellington, Fla., a swank townhouse in London and custom-built mansion that overlooks Stokes Bay in Bermuda.
With more homes than some people have fingers, why the need for yet another splurge in Colorado? Like most billionaires with residential real estate portfolios the size of medium-sized cities, the answer is likely this: just because he can.
