El Pescador Estate, Malibu
Malibu, United States. Unbranded. One house on nine and a half acres — the most expensive home ever sold in California.
Two hundred and ten million dollars, off-market, June 2024 — and the register enters it as a development of one, on the trophy-transaction limb of its own inclusion rules. Nine and a half acres on a bluff above El Pescador State Beach with about three hundred feet of private ocean frontage; a fifteen-thousand-square-foot Palladian house by Ferguson & Shamamian with interiors by Michael S. Smith, who remodelled the Oval Office under President Obama.
The seller is named and the buyer is not, and that asymmetry is the rule working. James Jannard, the founder of Oakley, is identified by three independent sources; no consulted source identifies the purchaser, so the register records *buyer not established* and speculates about nothing. He had bought at a reported $75 million about twelve years earlier — a gain of $135 million on the reported figures.
Malibu holds the top three sales in Californian history and all three are within a few miles of one another. This one displaced the $200 million paid for the neighbouring Rosebud estate at Paradise Cove Bluffs, which had displaced $177 million paid next door in 2021. Neither Laguna Beach nor Palo Alto appears anywhere near this tier: the highest 2025 sale in the Bay Area was $85 million at Woodside, and the highest in Hawaii was $65.8 million on Kāhala Avenue.
Who it is not for
Not for a buyer who wants service or a building: this is a private estate with no operator, no brand and no association. Not for anyone reading the price as a market signal — an off-market sale between two parties is one data point, not a comparable.
Sources
- Los Angeles Times via Robb Report — off-market sale at $210m, June 2024, seller James Jannard
- Patch Malibu, 20 June 2024 — 9.5 acres, 300 ft of ocean frontage, 15,000 sq ft, Ferguson & Shamamian, Michael S. Smith interiors
- rubyhome.com, 24 June 2024 — Malibu holds the top three Californian sales; Rosebud at $200m; $177m next door in 2021
- brandvm.com, 11 June 2025 — purchased at $75m about twelve years earlier
- Redfin, 5 January 2026 — 2025 rankings: Woodside $85m, Kāhala Avenue Honolulu $65.8m
- Buyer not identified in any source consulted; purchase price of 2012 is reported, not recorded
Verification
- Official source
- Checked
- Inventory
- From official source
- Sources disagree
- the Rosebud sale is dated May 2022 in one source and 2023 in another
- Property confirmation
- Pending
- Last verified
- —
Booking
Private Residences records addresses; it does not broker them. Enquiries are passed to the party named in the record, and nothing on this site is an offer.
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