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Bo Belmont, the real-estate investor who previously bought Kanye West’s gutted Malibu mansion, now wants to buy Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Holmby Hills home for half of the $61 million it listed for in September. Combs is currently in federal custody in New York while awaiting trial on trafficking and racketeering charges, and the house itself was raided in March, all of which Belmont seems to think will work to his advantage when it comes to the lowball. “It’s got a stigma attached to it,” Belmont told Realtor.com. “I have to go in and erase it. I have to completely change the Diddy vibe. We’ve come in with sage.”
News of the offer comes from Belmont, who put out a release, so it’s unclear whether or not Combs’s team will even entertain it. That said, the rapper is, unsurprisingly, struggling to sell ten-bedroom, 13-bath house, which he bought for $39 million in 2014. (As Belmont put it, “$30 million is better than no million.”)
Belmont runs Belwood Investments, a house-flipping company that pools investments in order to finance property flips. In the press release, Belmont wrote that “opportunities start as low as $1,000” to invest in Combs’s property. Belmont bought the Tadao Ando–designed home that Kanye West destroyed for $21 million after an initial listing of $53 million, and that purchase involved 500 people who had invested sums that ranged between $1,000 to $1 million. If and when Belmont flips that house, these investors will receive 50 percent of the net profit. “My goal is to restore it back to what it once was; for a new buyer to say, ‘I’m not buying Kanye’s trashed Ando,’” Belmont told The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to Belwood, Belmont worked as a mortgage broker. He started flipping houses after the 2008 crash. He’s also not new to rehabbing a marred past — Belmont served three years in prison for hitting a man with a pitchfork and fracturing his skull in 2013 after the latter apparently complained about noise at a party.
