How Kanye West’s Malibu Mansion Became a Crowdfunded Investment

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Kanye West is well known for his love of architecture. A few years ago, he created prototypes for affordable dome houses. Some of those domes ended up at his massive Monster Lake Ranch, a 4,500-plus-acre property near Cody, Wyoming. He sold that property earlier this year.

The house that has received the most headlines is his beach house in Malibu, CA. The house was designed by Tadao Ando, ​​a self-taught Japanese architect with a minimalist approach. Ando, ​​who won the famous Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995, shares West’s love of concrete as a building material. The property was built in 2013 for money manager Richard Sachs and was made of cast-in-place concrete, reinforced with steel and supported by massive pillars driven into the beach sand. It was first released on the market in 2020 for $75 million. West paid $57.25 million for the minimalist mansion in 2021.

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Usually, when a new owner buys an architectural treasure, they focus on preserving it. Despite once calling Ando the greatest living architect, West took the opposite approach. The New Yorker detailed how West and his wife Bianca Censori worked with a local contractor to dig up the interior. According to the article, West also met with architect Ron Radziner, whose firm Marmol Radziner worked with Ando during the initial construction. West consulted Radziner on plans to reimagine the house. However, after providing an estimate, Radziner never heard from West again, and the property was soon listed for $53 million.

The price dropped to $39 million in April 2024. Despite its architectural provenance, the small lot size, proximity to neighbors and the fact that the house is far from move-in ready seemed to work against a quick sale. Listing agent Jason Oppenheim, of “Selling Sunset” fame, told the Wall Street Journal that “it’s going to take several million dollars to get the house done.”

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Unique homes often need unique buyers, and the property may have found one in the form of Belwood Investment, a real estate crowdfunding firm with offices in Folsom and Newport Beach, California. The company was founded by Bo Belwood, a former mortgage loan executive whose biography says he participated in more than 1,200 real estate transactions. The Belwood website lists a portfolio of completed single-family home investments spanning the country.

Belwood appears to be crowdfunding the purchase and renovation plan for the mansion. Belwood went on an Instagram Live a month ago saying he was in contract on the property for $21 million. At the time, Belwood said he had already received an offer of $24 million, which he turned down. Belwood Investments issued a press release saying the company plans to spend $5 million on the renovations. Investments start at $1,000 and are open to non-accredited investors. In a YouTube video on Aug. 28, Belwood said his company is 96 percent funded for the deal. This isn’t the only celebrity property on Belwood’s plate. TMZ reported that Belwood Investments bought late musician Bill Withers’ Hollywood Hills home for $3.7 million.

Fix-and-flip investments always involve a high level of risk. This risk increases when the property has a high price and a small pool of potential buyers. West’s former home has celebrity and architectural cache, but that may not be enough to make it a guaranteed win for investors participating in this crowdfunding campaign.

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