 "Ambani's Antilia ranked most expensive billionaire home in the world by Forbes")
New York: Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper residence in Mumbai is the most expensive billionaire home in the world, according to a Forbes list, which also includes Indian-origin steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s houses in London.
Ambani’s 27-storey, 400,000 sq ft skyscraper home ‘Antilia’, named after a mythical island in the Atlantic, tops the Forbes list of the most expensive homes in the world.
“The title of the most outrageously expensive property in the world still belongs to Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia in Mumbai,” Forbes said, adding that it is “far and away” the world’s most expensive home, with construction costs reported between $1-2 billion.
The house has six floors of underground parking, three helicopter pads, and allegedly requires a staff of 600 to keep it running.
To put Antilia’s scale and cost into perspective, Forbes compared it to ‘7 World Trade Centre’, a 52-storey tower that stands near Ground Zero in Manhattan, with 1.7 million sq ft of office space, and built at a cost of $2 billion. Mittal’s houses in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens occupy the fifth and 18th spots on the list of the 21 most expensive billionaire homes in the world.
Billionaire Row addresses
The steel magnate is believed to own three homes on the high-security street known as ‘Billionaires Row’, including a neo-Georgian mansion near the Israeli embassy.
In 2008, the value of the house was about $222 million and is reportedly up for sale now.
Another house owned by Mittal on the upscale street was purchased for nearly $90 million in 2004.
He had picked up the 55,000 sq ft mansion from billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, and after pouring millions into its renovation, named it ‘Taj Mittal’.
The house has 12 bedrooms and a pool, and the marble used in the renovation was sourced from the same quarry as the Taj Mahal, Forbes said.
“As 2014 continues, the list of outrageously-priced homes owned by billionaires is stacking up.
“Although the market cooled off a bit in 2013, with no properties traded above the $100-million mark, 2014 has kicked off with a bang. London has set a new record, and three homes have been sold for more than $100 million so far this year in the US alone,” Forbes said.
PTI
_Disclosure: The Reliance Group has funded the promoter of Network18, which publishes Firstbiz
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