WhatsApp's Jan Koum Set to Spend $77 Million on House Next Door – DIRT

As the ultra-high-end property market clicked into warp speed back in 2017, a two-residence compound in a particularly finely feathered pocket of Beverly Hills was quietly shopped off market by one of L.A.’s most successful real estate agents as a tear-down opportunity with a hefty $85 million price tag. The owner of the sprawling hilltop estate was at the time identified in The Wall Street Journal only as “a second-generation member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family.” Other publicly accessible websites peg the property owner as Muhammad bin Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, one of late King Fahd’s ten children. (So the scuttlebutt goes, Prince Muhammad also owns several other humongous homes in the vicinity, including a Bel Air mega-manse with more than 40 bathrooms.) Though a couple of homes in the L.A. area did trade at $85 million or higher in 2017, including the $88 million Jay-Z and Beyoncé paid for an ultra-contemporary Bel Air mansion with a handful of swimming pools, the Saudi compound failed to attract a committed buyer. Back then, $85 million was still a lot of money for a tear-down mansion, even if it sits on 6.7 acres of prime real estate in one of the
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