Most expensive rental property in the US is in California.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: A spacious apartment in the Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces of India owned property the Pierre Hotel, facing Central Park in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue, is being touted as the most expensive rental property in New York City, at a princely price of a half million dollars a month.
The hotel, which hosted the prime minister of India Narendra Modi at a grand reception in September, has put up the apartment on the 39th floor of the hotel for a long-term extended stay rental.
The apartment combines the hotel’s presidential suite and several other hotel rooms, all of which come up to a massive 4,786-square-foot residence with six bedrooms and six bathrooms, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The rental apartment has views of Central Park and comes with access to the hotel’s amenities, including its two high-end restaurants and a chauffeur-driven Jaguar. It can be rented for 30 days or more. Brokers Therese Bateman and Andres Perea-Garzon of Town Fifth Avenue have the exclusive listing.
The next most expensive apartment currently on the market in New York is a $250,000 a month penthouse at the Palace Hotel at 455 Madison Ave, reported The Daily News.
The Pierre, at 2 E. 61st St., was once owned by Standard Oil tycoon John Paul Getty but has since been sold to Taj Hotels, part of the Tata group, founded by Ratan Tata. It has played host to countless celebrities, including Lady Gaga.
The hotel’s spectacular three-story penthouse, owned by stock investor Martin Zweig, is currently on the market for $95 million, said the News.
The most expensive rental property in the US, however, is a house in Beverly Hills, California, called Beverly House, which at a price of $600,000 a month, pips the Pierre’s price tag.
“When the filthy rich need a temporary pied-a-terre, they rent places like the Beverly House,” said author Mark Ellwood of CNBC’s “The Filthy Rich Guide.”
Beverly House sits on 6 private acres that include two guest homes. The main mansion is 50,000 square feet and has 17 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms. Rent for the Beverly Hills property makes it the most expensive in the U.S., according to Jeff Hyland, president of Hilton & Hyland, the agency listing the home.
The per-month-fee dwarfs the average median cost of a house in the U.S., which is $176,000, according to Zillow. And it’s three times the most expensive rental currently listed in the site’s database, which is $200,000 for a Malibu home.
The CNBC report said the house has been rented several times, but didn’t name the people who have lived there.
Four people have owned the home since it was built in 1927. Most famously, Marion Davies bought the property nearly 60 years ago for media magnate William Randolph Hearst. He lived out his final years there, and that’s part of the draw for the big rent.
The Beverly House has celebrity-like status of its own. It played a Hollywood role as the location where Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner shot their fictional romance in “The Bodyguard” and where ‘The Godfather’ was filmed. And it has hosted such guests as John and Jackie Kennedy, who stayed there during their honeymoon.