The World's Most Expensive Home

Real Estate Feature

The World's Most Expensive Home

courtesy:http://www.forbes.com

By
Kerry A. Dolan

Price tag: $155 million home.

Carefully set into the hillside above the Yellowstone Club in Bozeman, Mont., the home steps down the hillside, allowing every space, both indoor and outdoor, breathtaking views and secluded privacy.







“Swim-in” indoor/outdoor heated pool and spa

Boasting stone surfaces, massive rock boulders, an upper hot tub and a “wall of water” cascading from above, the pool area opens completely to a Southern stone terrace with breathtaking views of the Yellowstone Club’s Pioneer Mountain. A bonus: massage and exercise rooms off the pool

Lower level guest suites

These deluxe rooms abut private terraces with uninterrupted vistas of meadows, mountain ranges and wilderness. The three suites feature private bathrooms with soaking tubs and wood-burning fireplaces.








Lower level rec room

This area houses a spacious stone wine cellar, antique bar, theater and billiards.















Caretaker and staff quarters

Tucked into the hillside above the home’s six-car garage, the apartment has space for a caretaker family and housing for on-site chefs and waitstaff, nannies and housekeepers. Multiple guesthouses are also proposed for the property.
This area houses a spacious stone wine cellar, antique bar, theater and billiards.

Private chairlift

No ski home would be complete without a private chairlift. Take the elevator down to the ski room to board the lift. (The actual chairlift will have covered gondola-style chairs.)









Great room and sunken bar area

Commanding views of Pioneer Mountain, Lone Peak, Cedar Mountain and the Yellowstone Club, the great room has a distinctly “lodge” feel, with soaring timber trusses overhead, allowing unobstructed mountain views in three directions. There is also a massive stone fireplace and multiple seating areas.







Forget who has the biggest yacht. The emerging battleground for bragging rights these days is who will lay claim to the world’s most expensive home.

Timber and real estate baron Tim Blixseth just upped the ante. He plans to build and sell a 53,000-square-foot stone and wood mansion at the Yellowstone Club, the members-only, Blixseth-developed residential ski and golf resort near Bozeman, Mont. Price tag: $155 million.

Dining room with floor to ceiling glass wall

The dining room has space for 20 guests and features a rustic stone fireplace, timber beams, hand-troweled plaster walls and rustic wood floors.










That outranks the $139 million asking price for the Updown Court in Windlesham, England, which topped the Forbes.com list of the world’s most expensive homes in 2006. It also exceeds the $125 million that Donald Trump is asking for the renovated estate he owns in Palm Beach, Fla.

It seems price is no object for those with a hankering for souped-up real estate. Blixseth says several members of the Forbes 400 have already expressed interest in the home.

Covered deck

Extending from the family room and kitchen and offering sweeping views of Cedar Mountain, Pioneer Mountain and the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, the home's covered deck features extensive use of reclaimed heavy timber trusses, heated flagstone surfaces, an outdoor kitchen and a massive outdoor fireplace for cool evenings.






“I can’t believe the interest,” says Blixseth, who ranks No. 322 in the 2006 Forbes 400 list, with a $1.2 billion fortune. “Some of [the world’s richest] just have to have the best. Price is not an issue.”

Or is it? The very steep price conveys an exclusivity that only a small number of people worldwide can afford. And that may make these homes all the more attractive. Blixseth has a friend in Beverly Hills who he says raised the asking price on his home from $54 million to $100 million and received many more inquiries.

Exterior stairs
Extending from the family room and kitchen and offering sweeping views of Cedar Mountain, Pioneer Mountain and the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, the home's covered deck features extensive use of reclaimed heavy timber trusses, heated flagstone surfaces, an outdoor kitchen and a massive outdoor fireplace for cool evenings.






Mega Manse
The 10-bedroom Blixseth mansion will sit on 160 acres and come with a private gondola-like chairlift that will whisk residents up to the Yellowstone Club’s private ski slopes. There will also be an indoor/outdoor swimming pool separated by a glass wall that can slide away on warm summer days, as well as a home movie theater--practically a standard feature in super high-end homes. The home will come furnished.
“When someone writes that kind of check, they don’t want to have to worry about knives, forks and spoons,” says Blixseth. “The wine cellar should be stocked.”

Work is 70% complete on the 1.25 mile driveway, which will set Blixseth back $2 million because it runs through rugged, difficult terrain. He aims to strike ground on the home in June and, using a construction crew 10 times the typical size, hopes to finish work in 14 or 15 months. The architect for the project is Jerry Locati of nearby Bozeman, Mont. Locati has designed 35 homes in the Yellowstone Club resort.

The Price Of Luxury
Construction costs are expected to total between $35 million and $40 million. That doesn’t include the cost of the land, which he already owns. In 1991, Blixseth paid $19 million for 140,000 acres of timberland near Yellowstone National Park, and later swapped that land for the 13,400 acres that form the Yellowstone Club, plus some other parcels elsewhere in Montana.

Blixseth is confident he will be able to sell the planned super-mansion, if only because so many second homes in the $20 million range are being snapped up of late.

“I’ve never seen such a feeding frenzy,” he says. But, adds the billionaire, who grew up poor as the son of Norwegian immigrants, “I never thought I would ever be talking these numbers.”