Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Houses: Their Real Estate Portfolio Is Worth Hundreds of Millions
Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s houses are just as superlative as the ultra-talented pair. The power couple broke real estate records in 2023 with the purchase of a minimalist mansion in Malibu from art collectors William Bell Jr. and Maria Bell, paying nearly $200 million for the Tadao Ando–designed dwelling. As the Palisades fire continues to burn in the coastal city and in the neighboring Pacific Palisades, it seems that the mega mansion—which is the most expensive home in all of California history—is still standing. Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, was not so lucky. In an Instagram post shared on January 9, she revealed that her own Malibu bungalow had burned to the ground. “It was my favorite place, my sanctuary, my sacred Happy Place. Now it is gone,” she wrote. “God Bless all the brave men and women in our fire department who risked their lives in dangerous conditions.”
Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s home—which is situated outside of the mandatory evacuation zone—is fitting for a dynamic duo whose influence is so far-reaching. In late 2024, Beyoncé reprised her voiceover role as Nala in Mufasa, Barry Jenkins’ live action prequel to 2019’s The Lion King. (The Carters’ daughter, Blue Ivy, made her big-screen voiceover debut in the film as lioness cub Kiara.) Earlier in the year, the singer thrilled fans with the release of her country-inflected album, Cowboy Carter, for which she took home her first country award at the Billboard Music Awards.
Jay-Z, meanwhile, hasn’t released new music since 2018, when he and Beyoncé teamed up for their joint studio album, Everything Is Love. But that hardly means the multihyphenate has been sitting idle—the rapper’s Roc Nation management company has an ongoing relationship with the NFL, and will bring Kendrick Lamar to the Super Bowl stage in 2025. Currently, Jay-Z is embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit filed against him by a woman who alleges he and Sean “P Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her in 2000. Immediately after the lawsuit came to light, Jay-Z issued a statement denying the allegations.
The two music moguls share 56 Grammys between them and a combined net worth of $3 billion. Their drive and work ethic have earned them, among those other wins, birthday getaways in the South of France and at a luxury French Polynesian resort on Marlon Brando’s private island. The pair began building their own joint real estate empire in 2008, the same year that they married. In the years since, they have owned and sold homes in New York City, Miami Beach, New Orleans, the Hamptons, and Los Angeles.
Below, we’ve rounded up some of the incredible places that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have called home.
Tribeca penthouse where they tied the knot
Even though Jay-Z’s 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind” referenced a “stash spot” at 560 State Street, an address in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood, the rapper’s first big real estate purchase was actually in Lower Manhattan. In 2004, several years before he and Beyoncé were wed, Jay-Z shelled out $6.85 million for the impressive Tribeca penthouse. The seventh-floor unit is situated in a converted 1929 brick warehouse building and measures 8,000 square feet, with an additional 3,000 square feet of outdoor terraces. Though the specifics of the penthouse are sparse, other units in the building feature 12-foot ceilings, eight-foot-high casement windows, and concrete columns throughout, so it’s likely that the couple’s Tribeca home base is similarly structured. The couple held their private 40-person wedding at the penthouse, reportedly featuring 70,000 Dendrobium orchids flown in from Thailand. It appears that Jay-Z still owns the unit.
Beyoncé’s midtown Manhattan condo
For the first few years of their relationship, Beyoncé maintained as her bachelorette pad a $5 million condo in midtown Manhattan overlooking Central Park, which she purchased in 2005. The ultramodern three-bedroom spot measured 2,699 square feet and featured floor-to-ceiling windows and 11-foot ceilings, with high-end interior finishes selected by Paris designer Jacques Grange. Beyoncé reportedly used the three-bedroom condo primarily as a spot for friends and family to stay while they were in town. The singer sold the 44th-floor corner unit for $9.95 million in 2017 shortly after the birth of the couple’s twins Sir and Rumi. It spent just 11 days on the market. Her mother, Tina Knowles, also previously owned a residence in the same building but sold it in 2011.
Jay-Z’s Time Warner Center rental
Several years after purchasing his Tribeca penthouse, Jay-Z moved uptown to the Time Warner Center in Midtown. The rapper’s new home was a 4,825-square-foot penthouse on the 76th floor of the building, which he rented for a reported $40,000 per month. The three-bedroom unit boasted floor-to-ceiling windows and a skyline view of the city and Central Park, as well as unusual features like a fish tank that hung from the ceiling. The primary bedroom featured balcony access for some sky-high outdoor space. Jay-Z reportedly rented the residence for about four years; it would later sell for a record-breaking $31 million in 2011.
Mansion on Miami’s Billionaire Bunker
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Shortly after their wedding at Jay-Z’s Tribeca penthouse in 2008, the newlyweds began to build their joint real estate empire. First, they snapped up a property in Miami on the exclusive Indian Creek Island, where notable residents include Julio Iglesias, billionaire Carl Icahn, Adriana Lima, Tom Brady, and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Their Mediterranean-style villa (one of only 35 homes on the island) was built in 1991 and boasted seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, plus its own private boat dock. The couple was believed to have paid a little over $9 million for the compound, but they didn’t hold onto it long, flipping it back onto the market in 2010 and selling it for $9.3 million.
Hamptons rentals
The power couple next paid a casual $400,000 a month to rent a 31,000-square-foot New England–style mansion in Bridgehampton, New York, in 2012. The vacation home sat on 11.5 acres and was outfitted with all the necessities for a perfect summer getaway. In addition to a two-lane bowling alley, the home also offered a rock climbing wall, a skateboard half-pipe, a full bar, a pool, a tennis court, and an outdoor kitchen. And with a total of 12 bedrooms, including a primary suite that measured 2,800 square feet, the estate was perfect for the whole family.
The pair also famously rented a home in nearby Wainscott, located just off Georgica Pond, with Jay-Z’s longtime friend and Roc-A-Fella Records CEO Damon Dash for two weekends that July. “I felt like a little kid in a big haunted house there,” Jay-Z told New York Magazine at the time. The Italianate stucco house sat on 8.5 acres and featured an indoor-outdoor pool and a 120-seat screening room, which was used for an intimate yet star-studded premiere of End of Watch, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Celebrities like Madonna and Jennifer Lopez have also been known to rent the property.
Holmby Hills rental
With a solid home base on the East Coast established, the Carters began their search for a West Coast equivalent, but the pair had a surprisingly hard time locking one down. They were outbid on a number of properties (once by Minecraft creator Markus Persson), so they opted to rent first instead. In 2014, the superstars shelled out $150,000 a month for a newly built, contemporary Holmby Hills estate with floor-to-ceiling glass sliders, an infinity pool, a wine cellar, a 75-foot-long art gallery, and a home theater. When the property sold in 2015, the couple had to vacate the premises, meaning that their search for the perfect West Coast pad continued.
New Orleans church turned home
In the meantime, in 2015, rumor had it that Jay-Z and Beyoncé were the new owners of a historic home in New Orleans’ Garden District. It was later confirmed that the pair had indeed picked up a former Presbyterian church turned ballet school turned residence through an LLC linked to the Renaissance singer. Though it’s unknown how much the couple paid for the unique 13,300-square-foot mansion, it was listed for $2.6 million at the time of their purchase. Built in the 1920s in the Spanish Baroque style, the towering three-story building, known as La Casa de Castille, was divided up into a main residence and three separate apartments that measured 1,000 square feet each, with seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms spread across the spaces. In 2021, a fire broke out at the property; arson was suspected. Several months later, TMZ reported that the couple was listing the unique residence for $3.5 million and then a more ambitious $4.45 million. The home didn’t appear to sell, and it was later pulled from the market.
La Villa Contenta
"Hang Ten" Malibu Boys And Girls Club Anniversary Celebration
One week after welcoming twins Rumi and Sir in June 2017, the elated parents (and now 13-year-old daughter Blue) temporarily moved into an estate in Malibu to recoup and get to spend uninterrupted time together as a family. The pair rented the 6.3-acre compound known as La Villa Contenta for $400,000 a month. The extremely private, 12,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style residence had amenities like a movie theater, a gym, and a wine cellar, as well as numerous terraces overlooking the Pacific Ocean (though no direct beach access). The Malibu mansion was also where Beyoncé famously shared a first photo of the twins the day they turned one month old.
$88 million Bel Air mansion
Good things come to those who wait. Later that summer, the couple finally found their West Coast home base after a three-year search, picking up an ultramodern $88 million Bel Air mansion that they still own to this day. The property was newly built at the time, and comprises six separate structures measuring a total of 30,000 square feet, with amenities like spa and wellness facilities, a media room, a helipad, and a whopping four outdoor swimming pools. There are eight bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, a 15-car garage, and more than 10,000 square feet of outdoor living space. The property was developed by Dean McKillen, son of Irish billionaire property investor Paddy McKillen. He spent four years bringing his vision to life after purchasing the lot for $15 million. Also of note: All of the windows and pocketing glass walls are bulletproof for the utmost security.
Hamptons vacation home
The couple continued their landmark year in 2017 with the purchase of a seven-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bathroom mansion in East Hampton the following month. The Pond House is a 12,000-square-foot behemoth designed by renowned architect Stanford White, situated just off Georgica Pond. The estate includes 203 feet of waterfront property and is adjacent to a massive 17-acre meadow preserve, ensuring that the Carters have the utmost privacy. Incredibly, the previous owner even rotated the house 90 degrees so that the living room now faces west toward the pond, meaning that the family of five gets views of both stunning sunrises in the east and picturesque sunsets in the west.
Record-setting Malibu mega mansion
In 2023, Beyoncé and Jay-Z paid $200 million for a stunning Malibu home, setting a real estate record for the most expensive property in all of California’s history. The 40,000-square-foot abode is situated in the exclusive enclave of Paradise Cove on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean; the eight-acre bluff is aptly named Billionaires’ Row. (Their purchase beat out businessman Marc Andreessen’s previous real estate record of $177 million for the purchase of a Malibu home in 2021.) The Carters’ new home was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the same creative mind behind Kanye West’s minimalist Malibu mansion. It reportedly took the seller, renowned art collector Bill Bell and his wife Maria Bell, 15 years to complete construction on the property. Images reveal a stunning infinity pool that reflects the sky, large floor-to-ceiling windows, and, of course, Ando’s trademark concrete angles and clean-lined exteriors. Celebrity realtor Kurt Rappaport of the Westside Estate Agency represented both the buyers and seller.
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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