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The story of "The One" — the most insane tale in real estate history.
Featuring: Jellyfish, Space Invaders, & Crypto
Will Stern
February 09, 2024
They say shoot for the moon and you’ll land on a star.
Given the obvious scientific inaccuracy of that adage, I can’t think of a more perfect way to introduce “The One” — the most insane tale in Real Estate history.
It all starts with a man named Nile Niami.
Soon, we’ll get to the construction of The One itself, but I need to just get this out of the way first:
While touring a NYT reporter around the property in 2017, explaining the necessity of not just the in-house nightclub, but the VIP area, he explained:
“Let’s say you’re a super-wealthy single dude who just sold your company… You’ve just moved to L.A. and you don’t know anybody, so you hire someone to fill your house with partyers. You want everyone to know who you are, but you don’t want to talk to anybody. So you go sit in your V.I.P. room.”
Ok, had to make sure that quote made it in early. Now we’ll proceed…
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Coming from humble beginnings growing up in L.A. with a single mom, Niami seemed to ooze charisma from the time he was a kid. As a mentor later recalled: “He struck me as the best salesman I’d ever met in my life, at age 11.”
Major “Catch Me If You Can Vibes” IMO.
By high school, Niami parlayed a talent for horror film special effects into a career in Hollywood.
His aversion to subtlety was on full display from the beginning, as he formed a production company and dropped $300K on a trailer for his first film, which he called “‘The Terminator’ with a woman.”
He then proceeded to spend the late ’90s and early ‘00s making forgettable B-movies, largely straight to video.
After spending over $30M to produce a Keanu Reaves movie called The Watcher — which, despite failing to turn a profit or earn the respect of critics, audiences, or the general eyeball-having population of the earth, did manage to receive this incredible response from Roger Ebert:
"The Watcher" is about still another serial killer whose existence centers on staging elaborate scenarios for the cops. If these weirdos would just become screenwriters in the first place, think of the lives that could be saved.
Niami finally closed the curtains on the cinema as a result, pivoting hard to his second career in real estate.
Starting by building luxury homes on spec, he found real success — setting new price records.
He was hot.
He sold the Winklevoss twins a home for $18M.
In 2014, Sean Combs bought one of his homes for $39M. It’s somewhat relevant to note given his later ambitions of luxury that the Combs house included “an underwater tunnel connected to a grotto.”
Sidenote: In 2015, he launched Wolfpack, an app “for bros looking for other bros to hang with.” Don't bother looking it up, it's no longer in business.
Soon, he’d teamed up with architect Paul McClean, the go-to architect for celebs like Beyoncé, Jay Z and Calvin Klein.
Together, they built The Opus in Beverly Hills, a one-acre lot on “Billionaire’s Row” which sold for $50M in 2020 (originally listed for double that in 2017).
The pool in the middle of the Opus house.
But the project that put Niami on the map was The One: The Most Expensive House in America.
Niami bought the lot in 2012 for $28M.
For his money he received a decaying house previously owned by Rita Kagan, daughter of "Space Invaders" creator Michael Hogan.
He tore down the property, which was once featured on Columbo (there is so much going on in this story I’m sweating) and the work (and hype machine) was set into motion.
With tens of millions in loans, Niami embarked on building the most expensive home in history.
• 30-car garage
• 5,000-square-foot master bedroom
• 4 swimming pools, including a 180-foot infinity pool
• 1 "jellyfish room" with glass fish tanks on three sides
• 45-seat IMAX-style home theater
• 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, Beverly Hills, downtown L.A.
• 74,000-square-foot main mansion
• 100,000+ total square feet on property's four homes
• 8,500-square-foot private nightclub inside the mansion
Predictably, construction ran into a few hiccups. Common obstacles we can all relate to, like issues with the Jellyfish tank’s walls.
Though his jellyfish issues were real as can be, they weren’t enough to keep the debt collectors at bay.
Time to scheme… I mean raise legit capital!
Claimed to be inspired by a ~2013 meeting with Elon Musk, Niami announced the release of "The One Coin," a cryptocurrency backed by the house.
In reality, it was probably more about recovering enough money to pay off his $165M in defaulted loans.
Hard to imagine a crypto project with ulterior motives bordering on a word that rhymes with Membezelment (allegedly), but I guess there is a first for everything. I just hope nobody gets any ideas.
During the pandemic, he got "The One" approved for boxing events + a PPV platform.
He even went the tried and true LA method of enlisting Instagram influencers to market the property, offering a $1M finder's fee.
This is a real Google form he sent out to ‘prospective buyers’ — which is still live somehow.
Ultimately, the clock ticked down & there was no other choice.
In 2022, he sold it for $126M, a far cry from the $500M he had promised.
The crazy part is that probably didn’t even come close to covering his debts.
But as Niami says:
“Unlike the Mona Lisa, you have 100s of things you could do with The One”
Apparently, one of those things does not include jellyfish.