This one here is gonna be short but sweet, as Yolanda unfortunately does not possess any pictures to share with y’all.
Everyone knows that LA’s tiny Holmby Hills neighborhood pocket — Holmby lies between Beverly Hills and Bel Air and is essentially bisected by Sunset Boulevard — represents the ne plus ultra of SoCal residential real estate. And it seems that just about everyone is racing to snatch a piece of the prime pie.
Just a short jog up the very same street where Tom Ford spent $38,750,000 for Betsy Bloomingdale’s estate and Danny Harris dropped $30,000,000 for Manny Mashouf’s supersized villa, there’s a much smaller Colonial-style house. Although it was never officially listed on the MLS, property records show it secretly traded hands for $14,800,000 just this month (February 2017). The buyer happens to be a young dude named Justin Mateen, who with his childhood friend Sean Rad co-founded the mega-popular dating app Tinder.
Although it may seem admirable that Mr. Mateen achieved the feat of founding an enormously successful startup at such a young age, his business career has been mired in controversy. You see, Mr. Mateen was unceremoniously booted (well, “resigned”) from Tinder back in 2014, not long after sexual harassment charges were levied against him by Tinder’s lone female co-founder, Whitney Wolfe.
The news made headlines not just because of the high-profile entrepreneurs involved, but also due to the explicit text messages between Mr. Mateen and Ms. Wolfe (released by the latter). The contents of those appear to back up her story.
At this point, and by nearly all accounts, Mr. Mateen’s ties with Tinder have been totally severed. Yet Mr. Mateen’s LinkedIn still indicates his current position is “co-founder and CMO at Tinder”. Hmmm! Maybe he just forgot to update it? Anyway, we’re not quite sure what he’s been up to in the past couple years. Ms. Wolfe, on the other hand, has gone on to found Bumble, a sort-of feminist take on Tinder that is reportedly worth at least $500 million itself.
Yet we digress. Mr. Mateen’s new house was built in 1949 and measures in at a generous (but smallish for the neighborhood) 6,596-square-feet of frill-free living space with 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. Property records indicate that it has not changed hands on the open market in at least the last 30 years (possibly longer). We find no indication that the house holds any history of celebrity or architectural pedigree.
Hmmm. Could Mr. Mateen be planning a teardown? Who knows, but we just don’t see him as the type to live in an old-fogey house like this.
As y’all may know, Tinder co-founder Sean Rad — he is back in the CEO position — recently paid nearly $9 million for a house just above the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Perhaps Mr. Mateen has equal financial resources, though Yolanda does not actually believe that all Mr. Mateen’s cash comes from Tinder. Perhaps we are wrong. Maybe we are wrong. But we don’t think so.
Mr. Mateen is, you see, also the scion of an enormously wealthy family in Beverly Hills. His father, Kamyar Mateen, is a successful Persian-Jewish real estate investor who currently resides in large mansion in one of the city’s most coveted locations.
We’re not sure which architect designed the gargantuan mansion on the property, but it looks like something our favorite boi Richard Landry might dream up. Records indicate it was built by Papa and Mama Mateen in 2005, weighs in at a colossal 15,286-square-feet, and contains 6 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. There are no fewer than three gated entrances to the .62-acre estate. Other features include a massive garage, a pool house/cabana, a pool and pond and grassy lawns, and a small guest house or some sort of pavilion way out back.
The triangle-shaped property is located in an A+ in the Beverly Hills flats, practically directly across the street from Donald Trump’s West Coast abode and a quick (but harrowing) skip across Sunset Boulevard to the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, with its divine Wagyu Burger.
And that’s something we can all swipe right on.