Eyewear Oakley founder sells Malibu mansion for $210 million, makes it California’s costliest home

The uber-luxury pad — which is a lot of money even by the jaw-dropping standards of Malibu’s expensive real estate — is now the costliest home ever to be sold in California. The 15,000-square-foot (1,400-square-meters) sprawls on 9.5 acres (4 hectares) of desirable clifftop, with its own 300-foot stretch of ocean.

It’s a price tag that you’ll probably have to take a second look at: the founder of eyewear maker Oakley just sold his Malibu home for a whopping $210 million.

The ultra-luxury abode is currently the most expensive house ever to be sold in California, even by the astounding standards of Malibu's pricey real estate. The amount surpasses the meagre $200 million Jay-Z and Beyonce spent on their own Malibu estate the previous year.

Eyewear impresario James Jannard, who founded Oakley in 1975, made a tidy profit on the house, having bought it in 2012 for just $75 million, reported the Los Angeles Times, which said it had seen real estate records of the sale.

According to the site, the buyer's identity was unclear despite documents indicating that a Delaware-based limited liability business had bought the product. The 15,000-square-foot (1,400-square-meters) sprawls on 9.5 acres (4 hectares) of desirable clifftop, with its own 300-foot stretch of ocean.

It boasts two guesthouses, a large courtyard, a gym, eight bedrooms, and an absurd number of bathrooms—14 to be exact. Malibu is a popular seaside community 45 minutes outside of Los Angeles that is frequented by super-wealthy people and celebrities.

After tech mogul Marc Andreessen allegedly paid $177 million for an estate there in 2021, the city now owns the record for the three most expensive residences in California with the sale of Jannard and the Jay-Z/Beyonce deal.

California is both the richest and most populous state in the United States, with a huge disparity between the haves and the have-nots. In the six counties of the sunny south, the average house now changes hands for almost $900,000 — more than eight times the mean annual income.