The thriller bidder who walked off with one of America’s most well-known mansions has a very well-known title.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is the man behind the $130 million buy of Casa Encantada in Los Angeles, the legendary Bel-Air property that bought at a foreclosures public sale in July, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A restricted legal responsibility company linked to the 58-year-old enterprise capitalist positioned the profitable bid, according to the paper’s sources, maintaining his title under wraps for roughly two months.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, is behind the $130 million buy of Casa Encantada, the circa-Nineteen Thirties Bel-Air property. AFP via Getty Images
An LLC tied to Thiel won the property in July at an open-air foreclosures public sale held beside a fountain at Pomona’s Civic Center Plaza, and the purchaser’s identification had stayed secret until now. Simon Berlyn
The setting was hardly match for a trophy home. The sale performed out outside of the metropolis of Los Angeles at Pomona’s Civic Center Plaza, beside an unremarkable fountain, with an auctioneer in informal denim calling the bids.
Thiel had his eye on the property for months before the gavel fell, per the report. But don’t expect him to unpack. He views the hilltop unfold as an investment and plans to spruce it up, a source instructed the Journal.
The deal ranks as the greatest home sale in Los Angeles this yr, even though it landed far below the costs once floated for the place.
Thiel, 58, had been eyeing the roughly 8.5-acre, 40,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom property for months. Simon Berlyn
He doesn’t plan to reside there and instead sees it as an investment property he’ll improve. Nils Timm
Casa Encantada first hit the market in 2019 for $225 million and returned in 2023 asking $250 million — making it the most costly home in America at the time. After a sequence of chops, it was listed at $170 million as not too long ago as February, The Post reported at the time.
Set on roughly 8.5 acres overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club, the Nineteen Thirties mansion has seven bedrooms and about 40,000 sq. toes. It has twice smashed the document for the priciest non-public home sale in the US, fetching $12.4 million in 1980 and $94 million in 2000.
Hotel titan Conrad Hilton once owned the property and nicknamed it “The House Where Dreams Come True.” It later went to billionaire David Murdock, who bought it to telecom mogul Gary Winnick in 2000.
The home twice set the document for the most costly non-public home bought in the US, at $12.4 million in 1980 and $94 million in 2000. Nils Timm
It provides to Thiel’s portfolio, which contains properties in Washington, DC, Miami, and Buenos Aires, a compound in Hawaii, and property in New Zealand, where he holds citizenship. Nils Timm
Winnick, who constructed Global Crossing on a pitch to circle the globe with undersea fiber-optic cable, and his spouse, Karen, spent more than two years and tens of millions of {dollars} on a makeover led by architect Peter Marino.
Once billed as LA’s wealthiest man, Winnick died in 2023. His death uncovered a fortune in far worse form than outsiders knew, with the financier short on money and buried in debt.
At the middle of the mess was a 2020 loan from CIM Real Estate Credit, secured by the mansion, that swelled previous $150 million. Karen and her son Alexander accused the lender of working a loan-to-own scheme that left her “effectively destitute,” and she maintained she didn’t grasp the phrases.
CIM fired back in court papers, arguing that Karen personally signed a warranty and later put her title on a number of amendments and advance requests tied to the loans. The lender rejected claims of fraud and financial elder abuse, casting the association as a hard-nosed business deal between savvy gamers, and called the household’s allegations “fantastical.”
Casa Encantada was long owned by the late Global Crossing founder Gary Winnick and his spouse, Karen, who purchased it in 2000 and spent more than two years renovating it, with interiors by Peter Marino. Nils Timm
After Gary’s death in 2023 revealed he was deeply in debt and short on money, the property turned the subject of a contentious foreclosures combat that captivated LA’s social elite. Nils Timm
A foreclosures public sale slated for December 2025 was frozen at the eleventh hour.
“At Karen Winnick’s request, the California Court of Appeal granted a temporary stay of the foreclosure on December 16, 2025,” a lawyer for Winnick instructed The Post in February.
The reprieve didn’t maintain. By July, the public sale went ahead and the property went to the highest bidder.
Casa Encantada now joins a globe-spanning Thiel portfolio that contains properties in Washington, DC, Miami, Buenos Aires, a Hawaii compound and property in New Zealand, where the German-born investor is a citizen.
Thiel, who was also Facebook’s first outside backer, moved his major residence from California to Miami late last yr.
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