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It all started with a bet.
Miami investor Robert Rivani is looking to sell a renovated Malibu, Calif., home for $42.5 million—all because his friend bet that he couldn’t.
Rivani said he and a friend made a friendly wager that if Rivani can flip a luxury home for a certain amount of profit, the friend will pay Rivani a “seven-figure sum.” If he can’t, Rivani will owe the friend the same amount.
So Rivani, who has never flipped a high-end residential property before, bought a 1920s beachfront home in Malibu for $19.55 million last year, and is in the process of completing a roughly $5 million renovation.
“I have to win,” Rivani said with a laugh.
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The house is located on Carbon Beach, known locally as Billionaires’ Beach due to moneyed residents such as Larry Ellison and Jeffrey Katzenberg. When the renovation is complete, the roughly 4,900-square-foot house will have a lush green-wall facade, a Zen garden, a sunlit infrared sauna and a cantilevered hot tub, Rivani said. The project is about 50% complete, he said.
Rivani’s company, Black Lion, specializes in shopping centers and high-end restaurant spaces. The bet came about after a friend of Rivani’s who works in residential real estate told him that flipping a high-end home is more challenging than the investments Black Lion was making.
Rivani said he scoured the market for a house he believed was undervalued. He scooped up the Mediterranean-style home, which had been on and off the market for years, for $19.55 million, significantly less than its onetime asking price of $23.75 million.
“I thought with that kind of discount, it would allow me to spend a serious amount of money to make it look brand new,” he said.
Rivani said he has taken the property “down to the studs,” reconfigured and redesigned it. The resulting five-bedroom house was inspired by Rivani’s travels to countries such as Bali, the Aman resorts brand, and the design of the nearby Nobu restaurant, he said.
The house is built around an interior courtyard with a pond, garden and outdoor fireplace. The living spaces will have limestone flooring and Onyx on the walls, along with travertine and Roman clay plaster. The bedrooms will have walnut parquet floors. Other features will include a gym, a wine vault and a two-bedroom guest cottage. The custom windows and doors in the house cost about $300,000, according to a spokeswoman for Rivani.
Rivani said he expects to finish construction by early 2024.
The design of the home, which is being listed by Chris Cortazzo of Compass, differs enormously from the Beverly Hills home where Rivani and his wife, Krystal Rivani, lived before moving to Miami. That house, which the couple renovated at a cost of roughly $4 million, was inspired by the HBO TV series “Game of Thrones” and included a number of outlandish design flourishes, including a replica of the spiked iron throne on the show. They sold the home for $16.8 million earlier this year, down from its $21.995 million asking price.
Rivani said the design is a departure from the couple’s own personal style because he wanted to cast a wider net for buyers, and because their preferred fantasy-themed finishes wouldn’t fit in a coastal setting.
“I said, OK, well, what’s the one theme that everybody loves? It’s that Zen, peaceful yoga, meditation, happy, bright, open-windows look,” he said.
Rivani said he has been encouraged by recent big-ticket sales in Malibu, such as Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s roughly $200 million purchase of a Tadao Ando-designed home.
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In other markets, “things typically fall within a certain price per square foot,” he said. “This is an area where people with money just want what they want. They don’t care about the price per square foot, they want something they can show off to a friend.”
According to the terms of the bet, Rivani has until the summer of 2024 to make the agreed-upon profit. He thinks he can do it.
“As long as construction doesn’t delay me too long, I feel very very confident,” he said.
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