Typical home staging has evolved into show-stopping luxury home merchandising in the ultra-luxurious housing market of lavish trophy properties. Although the philosophy of exquisite design and Architectural brilliance is still innately prized, the prime focus of this new wave of luxury home merchandising is to attract the perfect buyer with extravagant turn-key interior packages that include every amenity the target buyer may desire.
While trophy properties have always been the leading edge of the luxury real estate market, the landscape of luxury catering to the super-rich is changing; it is up-scaling to another level with developers and investors increasingly moving towards creating lavish estates on spec. With living spaces and a level of refinement comparable to ultra-luxury hotels, this new class of pop-up mansions is being built to upstage existing inventory and break price records.
Joseph Ferrugio of Ferrugio Design + Associates in Los Angeles has identified this new class of mega-mansions as “luxury personal resorts.” Ferugio, is the interior architect responsible for the sensational new estate at 1181 North Hillcrest Road in Beverly Hills that was infamously sold to billionaire Swedish Minecraft video game programmer Markus Persson in late 2014. Originally offered at $85 million, the estate sold for a record breaking $70 million, making it the most expensive home ever publicly sold in Beverly Hills history.
“These luxury personal resorts are not your standard house,” said Ferrugio, in an interview with The Pinnacle List. “They are essentially boutique hotels.”
Built to 5-star luxury resort standards, 1181 North Hillcrest represents a new breed of mega-spec L.A. mansions with a level of super-lux bespoke home décor that goes far beyond normal luxury standards.
“Since we were making a house for a billionaire, we wanted the house to exude a billionaire’s lifestyle,” said Ferrugio. “We created something that would appeal to a buyer with very discerning taste.”
Signature one-of-a-kind interiors ensure that the rare and vital element of exclusivity, that is so desired by the ultra-rich, is delivered with an infusion of glamour designed to intrigue and target the wants, needs, and ultimately the aspirations of affluent buyers.
The trend for these new ultra-high-end luxury homes is to create unique interior environments that cannot be duplicated with off-the-shelf interior decor. Items such as original sports memorabilia and commissioned art are incorporated with other luxury branded elements specifically tailored to the homes target audience providing a potential buyer with the instant satisfaction of purchasing a fully furnished and decorated turn-key luxury residence that they can just move into and unpack.
Increasingly, the lesson learned in the uber-luxury real estate category is that, as you move up the ether of wealth, buyers are not so much distracted by price as they are attracted to beauty and the scarcity of exclusivity.
Image Credit: Berlyn Photography
