I’m currently on the hunt for a new apartment, and if you’ve ever participated in the Cape Town property-hunt-hunger-games, you’ll understand why my gin intake has increased significantly over the past two weeks.

Apart from the fact that everything is going for the small price of your life-savings every month, agents also require a blood sample and your certified 10-year career plan before they’ll even let you in the door.

But that, unfortunately, is the price we pay for not being super-rich and affluent.

For the super-rich and affluent, properties like the one that recently left private listing for the open market in the United States are the way to go.

Although to be fair, this one is more of a Jeff Bezos property than a Mark Zuckerberg property. Then again, we’ll see how much Bezos is worth after the divorce.

Introducing the most expensive property in the United States, located in Beverly Hills, and formerly owned by now-deceased billionaire Jerrold Perenchio.

If you want to call this place home, get ready to drop $245 million (around R3,4 billion).

According to Forbes, the house, which is located at 875 Nimes Road and named Chartwell (after the 14th-century British estate where Prime Minister Winston Churchill lived for over 40 years), didn’t start out on the full 10,3 acres.

[Perenchio] purchased several of the adjoining lots, including land that had been owned by Ronald and Nancy Reagan, to make up the estate as it exists today.

The 25,000-square-foot French Neoclassical-style main house was already there, having been designed in the 1930s by architect Sumner Spaulding and built out of symmetrically cut limestone, according to the listing.

If the exterior looks familiar, it’s because it features in The Beverley Hillbillies as the place the Clampetts moved to once they struck it rich:

Perenchio bought the main parcel in 1986 for $13.5 million and a few years later began a major interior revamp overseen by French decorator Henri Samuel, who had worked with famous clients such as the Vanderbilts, Rothschilds and designer Valentino.

The gardens have a strong European influence and look like the types of places that people would meet to plan betrayals in Game of Thrones.

There isn’t a photo of the Wallace Neff designed five-bedroom guest house, but it is one of the buildings that comes with the sale. The property also includes a wine cellar with room for 12,000 bottles, a ballroom and underground garage with enough room for 40 cars.

Oh good. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough parking.

[source:forbes]