For any of you stock market followers (or whatever), put on your thinking caps and y’all may recall that exuberantly wealthy Silicon Valley widow Laurene Powell Jobs recently raised eyebrows when it was revealed that she was no longer Disney’s largest single shareholder, as she had been since Steve Jobs’ 2011 death. Quietly and rather unexpectedly, she sold about half of her 128 million+ shares at the tail end of 2016.
According to a spokesperson, the massive stock sale was not due to Mrs. Jobs’ lack of faith in Disney’s future fortunes. Rather, she just wanted to diversify her portfolio and look into other alternative (unspecified) investments.
Although what exactly she did with all that cash remains a mystery, that stock sale certainly provided Mrs. Jobs with the moolah to invest in or buy just about anything the world has to offer. At Disney’s current stock price of $110.92, her 64 million sold shares are worth in excess of 7 billion bucks. It’s a good thing, too, because homegurl has been on an epic, billionaire-baller-style real estate spending spree for the past couple years. She now owns a $15 million horse ranch in Wellington (FL) — directly across the street from Bill Gates’ equestrian compound, a $16 million horse barn in Los Altos Hills (CA), a $20 million vacant lot in Woodside (CA) upon which she is building a fancy yet rustic compound, and a multi-million dollar house in Palo Alto (CA) which has long served as the Jobs’ family’s main residence.
As far as Yolanda knows, however, easily the most expensive property in Mrs. Jobs’ portfolio is the epic yet unfinished compound she owns on Malibu’s coveted Paradise Cove. Less than two years ago — back in April 2015 — the super-rich heiress dropped a stunning $44,000,000 (in cash) for three-acre parcel that encompasses an unfinished blufftop Traditional-style house and two small guest houses on the beach below it. No real estate agents were involved (or harmed!) in that transaction.
Yolanda has long suspected that Mrs. Jobs might also want acquire the landlocked property next door, which is situated between the Pacific Coast Highway and her big blufftop spread in such a way so that Ms. Powell Jobs probably requires some sort of annoying ingress/egress grant over it to reach her driveway. What sort of billionaire would put up with that inconvenience?
Sure enough, kiddies, she finally got around to it. Records show Mrs. Jobs’ LLC closed on that small adjacent property for $16,500,000 this February (2017). Naturally, the deal was completely off-market.
Yolanda confesses we know little about the house in question other than what aerial images and tax records tell us. It appears to be a somewhat standard-looking two-story 4,058-square-foot house with a red tile roof and an attached four-car garage. There’s no pool and the landscaping appears mostly unkempt.
The sellers of the property — a Joseph & Carol Lang — originally purchased the non-fancy but well-located house on 1.26 acres back in 1997 for — ready for this? — just $800,000. What that means, y’all, is that Mr. & Mrs. Lang made very some serious bank when they sold to Ms. Powell Jobs for $16,500,000. That’s more than 20 times the amount of their initial investment, after all.
Although Ms. Powell Jobs has now spent a combined $60,500,000 for a multi-parcel, multi-acre, multi-structure compound, the property is still nowhere near complete. We can assure you all that she needs to — and will — spend many millions more to finish the residence itself, not to mention all the landscaping and furniture and interior design flourishes that are still absent.
Just so you get an idea of how mind-boggling Ms. Powell Jobs’ spending is, keep in mind that the biggest sale ever in Malibu is the $74,500,000 that billionaire Jim Jannard paid billionaire Howard Marks for his 5-acre blufftop spread back in early 2013. And that, y’all, was for a completely rebuilt compound with 20,000++ square feet of living space, fully landscaped, with interiors done up by White House decorator Michael S. Smith. The sale price also included just about every stick of furniture in the place.
When the dust finally settles on Ms. Powell Jobs’ completed Paradise Cove spread, Yolanda thinks it is highly likely that she will have spent far more than even Mr. Jannard. How y’all like them apples?
One more thing, kiddies. What do y’all think Mr. and Mrs. Lang — the non-famous couple that Ms. Powell Jobs just paid the big bucks for their little house — did with their $16.5 million windfall? Leave the country? Move to Hawaii?
Nope. Apparently they like Malibu so much that they decided to stay. And they also decided to go big — very, very big. Just 10 days after winning the proverbial lottery, the couple paid a whopping $9,100,000 for a massive mansion that’s basically just up the road — in the celebrity-studded Point Dume area.
Talk about a 180 from their old place. This bloated baby’s got marble, onyx, and gold leaf galore. Rather honestly described as a “rare neoclassic estate” and “truly unique” in marketing materials, the 8,379-square-foot mansion has 6 swagged-out bedrooms and 7.5 gilt-trimmed bathrooms. But Yolanda will stop describing this strangely squat single-story sprawler now. No offense, kiddies, but the poor dear is rather hideous.
But wait — there’s at least one good thing about it! Although this house is landlocked, it sits high on a knoll that provides pretty ocean views down to Paradise Cove, which their old property did not. So they’re livin’ large thanks to Apple and Disney. Meanwhile, Forbes estimates that Mrs. Jobs is worth 20.2 billion bucks, way up from a paltry $16.7 billion just a year ago.
Know what they say about the rich getting richer and all that?
