Tech moguls looking to buy a trophy home have long turned to Southern California.
Billionaire Larry Ellison has become almost legendary for purchasing prized beachfront Malibu properties. Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos spent $24.5 million for a Beverly Hills compound. Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, dropped $55 million last year to buy Ellen DeGeneres’ Holmby Hills mansion.
They were all upstaged in December when “Minecraft” creator Markus Persson, a Swedish tech billionaire, forked over $70 million for an epic custom mansion in Beverly Hills. It’s fitted with iPad-controlled fountains, vodka and tequila bars, a $200,000 candy room and an onyx dining table for 24.
But L.A.’s appeal among techies is spreading beyond the mega-rich, with tech industry buyers from Silicon Valley spending more and more time in the Southland – and snapping up real estate here. They include Facebook and EBay executives as well as angel investors and start-up entrepreneurs.
“We’ve seen an uptick in buyers from the technology industry over the last several years – some moving to Los Angeles and some buying second homes here, as a kind of peaceful retreat,” said Charles Black, executive vice president of marketing and strategic development at Hilton & Hyland, the listing agent in the Persson sale. (Read more here.)