Kanye West's $57 Million Malibu Mansion Is Rotting
Kanye West's $57 million Malibu mansion is a pretty good metaphor for Kanye himself. Like the man now known as Ye, the Tadao Ando-designed beachside house was once the epitome of artistic triumph.
Now, both Ye and his 4,000 square foot Malibu home have rotted from the inside out.
To be fair, Ye's issues have always been present to some degree but the Malibu mansion could've stayed pretty.
Let's take a trip through time back to when Ye purchased the house, to witness its decline over the past few years, dovetailing neatly with Ye's public reputation (and, depending on how you feel about his recent music, his career as a whole).
In late September 2021, news broke that the man now known as Ye acquired a Tadao Ando-designed oceanfront house in Malibu for about $57 million.
Before Ye purchased the mansion, it was listed for closer to $75 million.
Shortly after purchasing the Malibu house, Ye listed his Wyoming ranch for sale (only $11 million, $3m less than he paid for it in 2011).
Shortly after, Kim Kardashian separately bought herself a gargantuan $70m house in Malibu, not so far from Ye's new digs. Mostly coincidence but worth a mention as they were still together at the time.
Ye's enormous Malibu home boasted a brutalist façade typical of Ye's tastes, giant windows overlooking the sea, and approximately 4,000 square feet, a pretty big footprint for Malibu.
In early 2022, Ye and Kim Kardashian moved towards their inevitable divorce and he began prepping much-delayed album DONDA 2.
Around the same time, Ye brought in contractors to oversee extensive remodeling plans for his Malibu palace, renovations that were destined to remain uncomplete perhaps forever.
A few months later, by the middle of 2022, Ye's Malibu house was entirely gutted and barren as repairs dragged on and on.
The floor-to-ceiling glass windows facing the water had long been removed, leaving the rear of the building entirely open to the elements.
Ye was at one point spotted checking out the progress on his home in the middle of summer, taking one of his many girlfriends at the time with him.
A new problem emerged by the end of 2022, though, when Ye went full white nationalist.
Eventually, his anti-Semitic stupidity would inspire nearly every business partner to officially drop both Ye and his YEEZY brand.
By April 2023, Ye's Malibu property (and his Sunday Service HQ in Los Angeles) had fallen into deep disrepair.
Neighbors told TMZ that Ye's Malibu mansion was "left to rot" with no one is maintaining the structure in the meantime, despite all the planned renovations Ye had planned. In fact, they hadn't "seen anyone around for many months."
The home's interior walls, long exposed to the outside air, wind, and sand, began to crumble and the metal railings soon rusted, becoming a respite for seagulls.
And, around the time that Ye was brandishing neo-Nazi spreadsheets as evidence for his Jewish conspiracy theories, a Happy Hanukkah sign was posted onto his Malibu house's garage door.
Remember that one of his reported collaborators on the Malibu redesign was Jewish billionaire James Goldstein.
While Ye's Tadao Ando-designed home collapsed into the sea, Kim Kardashian was at work with Ando himself, whom she met with during a 2023 trip to Japan.
In April of that year, Kardashian spoke with Ando about "a dream project we have been working on for the past two years," promising that the pair would "break ground" imminently.
All this while Ye's Ando-designed Malibu mansion lays decrepit and unused.
By December 2023, things were so bad at the property that Ye reportedly enlisted Jason Oppenheim, Selling Sunset's most aerodynamic salesman, to shift his Malibu mansion for a paltry $53 million, $4 million less than Ye paid for it, before dropping it to a still-imposing $39 million. The sale was rumored to be completed in September 2024.
Don't feel bad for Ye, though. Just because he presumably can't afford to put more money into his multi-million-dollar mansion doesn't mean he's homeless.
Around the time that his mansion was decomposing, Ye and wife Bianca Censori were staying at various top-dollar hideaways across the Los Angeles area, including the Malibu-based Nobu Ryokan where rooms costs upwards of $2,000 per night. Ye has since relocated to Italy, Saudi Arabia, Korea, and China.
Remember that Ye also owns acres of land in Calabasas, his childhood home in Chicago, a house in Belgium, and plenty of other real estate, too, so he could easily move somewhere else if he got tired of dwelling in a luxurious motel.
