In September 2010, La Belle Epoque sold for approximately €240 million.  At the time, this instantly made it the most expensive residential real estate transaction ever recorded anywhere in the world. Coverage at the time framed it as a watershed moment for the ultra-luxury property market.

Often referred to as the “Bay of Billionaires,” Antibes is one of the most legendary locations on the French Riviera, nestled on the rocky outcrop overlooking the sea between Cannes and Nice. It is a place where superyachts idle offshore, hidden fortunes sit behind gated villas, and a swimming cove barely large enough for a few dozen sunbathers has become one of the most photographed patches of water in Europe.

The château carries nearly 120 years of European high-society history, a Russian oligarch's dramatic downfall, and a French state seizure along the way, all wrapped into one of the most storied addresses on the French Riviera.

For a brief but headline-grabbing stretch in the world of ultra-luxury real estate, the title of one of the most expensive private homes ever sold belonged to an estate above the harbor on Hong Kong's Victoria Peak. The sale price: roughly HK$2.8 billion, or approximately US$361 million — a figure so large that it briefly placed the property among a small handful of the priciest residential transactions ever recorded anywhere on Earth.

The inspiration for Fleur de Lys was explicit and unapologetic: France's 17th-century Vaux-le-Vicomte, the château whose extravagance so alarmed King Louis XIV that he had its creator arrested and then built Versailles in response, determined to outdo it.

Beyond its price tag, the transaction carried symbolic weight. At the time of the sale, it was reported as the largest home purchase ever made by a Black American buyer in U.S. history

Over the past decade, Laurene Powell Jobs — the philanthropist, impact investor, and widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — has quietly assembled one of the more remarkable residential holdings in Southern California, built parcel by parcel along the Malibu coastline.

The WhatsApp co-founder paid $87 million for an oceanfront estate at 27560 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu's Paradise Cove — a purchase that, on its own, would have been a notable transaction in any given year.

Tucked into Paradise Cove, one of Malibu's most exclusive stretches of sand, sits a property with a name as romantic as its price tag is enormous. Mar de Amor — Spanish for "sea of love" — is the 2.6-acre oceanfront compound built by broadcasting billionaire David Saperstein.

Some real estate deals make headlines because of the number attached to them. Ken Griffin's penthouse at 220 Central Park South did that in January 2019 — and then, seven years later, made headlines all over again for an entirely different reason. This is the story of the most expensive home ever sold in the United States, the tower it sits atop, and the billionaire who bought it.