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 that also includes Indian-origin steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s houses in London.
Ambani’s 27-floor, 400,000-sq foot 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 it is the world’s most expensive home “far and away” with construction costs reported in a range of $1 billion to 2 billion (`6,000 to 12,000 crore).
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The house has six floors of underground parking, three helicopter pads, and reportedly requires a staff of 600 to keep it running.
Putting Antilia’s scale and cost in perspective, Forbes compared it to “7 World Trade Center”, a 52-story tower that stands near Ground Zero in Manhattan. With 1.7 million square feet of office space, it was reportedly built for $2 billion.
Lakshmi Mittal’s houses in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens, a high-security street known as ‘Billionaires Row’, occupy the 5th and the 18th spot on the list of 21 most expensive billionaire homes in the world.
Forbes said the home, rumoured to have been purchased for his son, was sold by hedge fund billionaire Noam Gottesman for about $222 million in 2008. It is reportedly up for sale now.
The other Mittal house on the list was purchased for nearly $90 million in 2004 from billionaire Bernie Ecclestone. After pouring millions more into its renovation, including marble sourced from the same quarry as the Taj Mahal, he named it “Taj Mittal”.
“The market cooled off a bit in in 2013… but 2014 has kicked off with a bang. London set a new record, and three homes have sold for more than $100 million so far this year in the US alone,” Forbes said.
