Last year, Yolanda briefly chatted about a successful haircare entrepreneur named Nikki Eslami. In case anyone cares about such things, Miss Eslami was the buyer who coughed up $3,150,000 for the Calabasas starter home of lip kit mogul-slash-social media queen Kylie Jenner.
Despite being only 30 years of age (or so?), Miss Eslami also had a multi-million-dollar starter house of her own to unload. Unlike the new house in the remote wilds of Calabasas, however, her old pad is located smack-dab in the middle of LA, literally just steps from bustling Melrose Avenue. Also unlike the house she bought from Miss Jenner — a typically suburban faux Spanish-villa McMansion sort of thing built in the 90s — her former home is an ultra-contemporary box that was only built in 2016. Records reveal Ms. Eslami paid $3.3 million for the spec-house in the final days of that year and sold it just six months later for $3,750,000.
We are not sure why Ms. Eslami changed up her location and architectural style so drastically. Was she intending to flip the LA pad all along? Did her tastes develop and change over the past couple years? Was she abducted by aliens and secretly replaced by a robot replica with a taste for fancy tract homes in suburbia? We may never know.
But all that is not why Yolanda is here today — we wanted to discuss Miss Eslami’s old house because it was purchased by the scion of a very powerful family — one of the wealthiest and most prominent in their state, actually. Although the buyer’s identity is shielded behind a mysterious corporate entity with a Las Vegas (NV) address, Yolanda happens to know it is a 23-year-old fella named Lorenzo Fertitta Jr.
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Young Mr. Fertitta is a former college football player who is also the son of billionaire Lorenzo Fertitta Sr. and the nephew of billionaire Frank Fertitta III. His daddy and uncle are brotherly business partners who run and majority own Station Casinos in Vegas, the successful chain founded by their father, the late Frank Fertitta Jr. For those curious, grandpa Fertitta was the descendant of Italian immigrants to Texas. In the 1960s, he moved to Vegas and got his start in business, allegedly helped by his ties to organized crime. (However, there is no indication that the family business today is anything other than legitimate, and the Fertitta brothers are major philanthropists).
More famously, the Fertitta bros are also the guys behind Zuffa LLC, which — until recently — was the longtime owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Zuffa paid a paltry $2 million in 2001 for the rights to the then-tarnished UFC name.
In 2016, Zuffa LLC sold the now-flourishing UFC business to talent agency WME for a dumbfounding $4.2 billion. Hot damn! Not a bad return on a $2m investment, are we right?
Keep in mind, y’all, that the Fertitta family were already billionaires prior to the WME acquisition. Essentially, in 2016, they went from being outrageously rich to unfathomably rich. Forbes says the brothers now sport a combined net worth of $4.8 billion or so. The Fertitta clan is now the second-richest family in Nevada — behind only the Sheldon Adelson clan.
Anyway, young Lorenzo Fertitta Jr. recently graduated from college and now toils as an analyst at Fertitta Capital, the private equity firm created by his family to manage their substantial assets. The firm is based in Los Angeles — hence why Mr. Fertitta needs a house here. Let’s discuss.
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To be honest, kiddies, Yolanda is not sure which LA neighborhood this is. We would say it is West Hollywood, but actually it is a bit too far south to be within the WeHo city confines. It is also too far west to be Hancock Park and too far east to be Beverly Grove. According to Curbed’s map, the house is located in the rather ambiguous “Fairfax district”.
Hmmm. Let’s just say that this is a very walkable, central LA area — a quick skip to Melrose, and just a few blocks from The Grove.
The two-story contemporary features a front-facing two-car garage and sits on a narrow .17-acre lot — typical for this tightly-packed neighborhood. The 4,712-square-foot mini-mansion has a wee front yard area and party-ready backyard with a firepit, a raised negative-edge swimming pool/spa combo, and an outdoor shower (in case Mr. Fertitta feels like being an exhibitionist, we guess).
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Like many of these blocky new-fangled contemporaries — Yolanda sees them all over in nearby WeHo — the first floor is one big, open room. The place is slathered in glazed porcelain flooring (a marble lookalike), and there is a dining table that can easily seat 12, a trendy “floating” staircase, and a kitchen equipped with state-of-the-art Miele appliances. Disappearing Fleetwood doors bring the outdoors inside and vice versa.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Though the house was originally built with four en-suite bedrooms, the fashionable Ms. Eslami spent a great deal of moolah to convert one into a walk-in shoe closet for her designer footwear. Thus, the residence now has just three bedrooms — two upstairs, and a maid/guest suite on the first floor. The master suite sports hardwood floors, a private balcony, and a bathroom outfitted with a oversized glass shower and a soaking tub. Unfortunately, the entire master bath is completely visible to anyone in the bedroom via a glass wall.
Yikes! Personally Yolanda has no desire to watch our significant other perform their personal ablutions, but that is just your gurl.
Now then — as y’all might expect of billionaires, the Fertitta fam owns the requisite fleet of private jets and even a superyacht. They also preside over a healthy portfolio of prime real estate. Our Mr. Fertitta’s daddy — that would be Lorenzo Fertitta Jr. — currently resides in a custom-built 13,417-square-foot mansion in an exclusive Las Vegas gated community. Probably not coincidentally, the house is right next door to a 15,299-square-foot custom-built mansion owned by his mother Victoria Fertitta, the widow of Frank Fertitta Jr.
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It appears that Granny Fertitta’s house was built in Tuscan-esque style, while her son’s pad is a more general Meditteranean-ish pad. Both homes have grassy lawns, formal gardens, and rectangular swimming pools. However, Lorenzo Fertitta’s pad also sports a main gated driveway that leads to a formal motorcourt, plus a secondary driveway that contains not one but two additional motorcourts. There are garages that can accommodate at least six luxury vehicles, plus a sports court and what appears to be a skateboarding park of some sort.
Both Fertitta mansions front the exclusive Tournament Hills golf course in Summerlin, which happens to be the exact same golf course that Sheldon Adelson’s 43,000-square-foot monster mansion also fronts. In fact, the Fertittas’ homes are so close that they can probably see Mr. Adelson’s mega-pad from their respective backyards (and vice versa).
In June 2009, Frank Fertitta III coughed up a fat $28,000,000 for a mansion in Laguna Beach (CA). The oceanfront home is located within the exclusive, guard-gated Emerald Bay community and is only a couple doors down from a $35 million residence owned by LA Fitness CEO Louis Welch.
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Apparently the Fertittas like to stick close together. Granny Fertitta (Victoria Fertitta) also owns a blufftop home in the very same Laguna Beach enclave. Although Yolanda cannot tell when exactly she acquired the property, it appears she has owned it for at least 20 years.
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And we would be remiss if we failed to mention that Frank Fertitta III recently forked out a mind-bending $70 million for a triplex penthouse in Manhattan’s prestigious 520 Park Avenue building, designed by venerable architect Robert A.M. Stern. That price remains one of the biggest sums ever paid for a home in New York City.
Listing agent: April Lopez, The Agency
Lorenzo Fertitta Jr.’s agent: Michelle Graci, Rodeo Realty