How did the expansive property, known as The Mountain, list for 10 figures and end up selling for $100,000 in a Pomona courtroom? Infighting, a Hollywood wannabe and a big bluff caused America's all-time trophy property to end up in legal chaos.
If the tenor of Noval's April 2018 fete was any indication, the expectation was that things were only going to get better. The Mountain looked ready to move.The mountain of Beverly Hills is more than just the country's first-ever billion-dollar property. For decades, it has been both a fantasy and a curse for a steady stream of dreamers and hustlers.
When Dickens and Noval were first introduced in 2007, Dickens needed a financial lifeline to develop the property quickly. Noval, through connections he says come from "the Middle East" and a small fortune he had managed to retain from his pre-conviction life, provided one. They made an unexpected pairing: Dickens is a teetotaler and devout Christian; Noval makes no secret of his playboy lifestyle.
But there was trouble on the horizon. Starting in 2018, L.A.'s luxury real estate market was showing signs of cooling after its historic seven-year run. The region's most high-profile trophy properties were being hit the hardest. The price of British heiress Petra Ecclestone's Holmby Hills mansion, The Manor, was slashed from $200 million to $160 million . In 2017, 924 Bel Air Road, offered by megadeveloper Bruce Makowsky, had come on the market for $250 million.
In early 2019, Scott Gillen, an ultra-high-end developer, made a $400 million offer on The Mountain. Gillen, who recently brought a portfolio of 13 bespoke Malibu homes to the market for $500 million, checked a lot of boxes. In 2017, he listed an $80 million spec mansion and weeks later purchased a 24-acre land parcel in the area for $50 million. By all appearances, his latest step was a bid to up his profile in L.A.
The bid's intended purpose was to create a new round of headlines, which it did. But those headlines also caught the attention of the Mark Hughes Trust, which was still owed a large amount of money on the loans. Says Richards: "Right after the [TMZ] article, we started getting more aggressive responses from the lenders. There was a direct correlation between lender activity and the article — it upset them.
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