For years, spec developer Nile Niami has teased “The One” — a 100,000-square-foot mega-mansion in Bel-Air that he hoped to sell for $500 million. But his plans are now in peril.
Niami, known for his brazen personality and wildly ambitious real estate projects, borrowed $82.5 million from Hankey Capital in 2018 to build the extravagant home. Over the last three years, that debt has ballooned to more than $110 million, and Hankey wants its money.
According to a document obtained by The Times, the lender just served Niami a notice of default on the prized property, which is considered the first step in the foreclosure process. If Niami can’t repay the loan in 90 days, Hankey could force a sale of the home.
Listing agents Rayni and Branden Williams of Williams & Williams at the Beverly Hills Estates and Aaron Kirman of the Aaron Kirman Group at Compass could not be reached for comment.
“We felt the owner of ‘The One’ was distracted from the job at hand, which is to bring the biggest and best house in the United States to market for sale,” said Don Hankey, chairman of Hankey Investment Co. "We hope our actions will kick off the official listing.”
There are multiple solutions for Niami to avoid a forced sale of the property, which include paying back all or at least some of the loan or coming to an alternative agreement with the lender. But such sales, even for prized properties, are not without precedent.
In 2019, the owners of the famed Mountain in Beverly Hills — a 157-acre lot considered the city’s finest piece of undeveloped land — faced a foreclosure sale due to $200 million in unpaid loans. They tried to delay the sale by declaring bankruptcy, but their efforts were unsuccessful, and the land was auctioned off outside a Pomona courthouse.
Default notices are nothing new for Niami. He received two in 2020 alone: one for a debt of $10 million on a property he owns at 1369 Londonderry Place in the Hollywood Hills, and one for a debt of $23.4 million on a mansion at 10701 Bellagio Road that he’s currently trying to sell for $59 million in Bel-Air.
He took out a $200,000 loan from Compass for a separate Bel-Air property he was trying to sell in 2019, and the real estate company sued him in October for failing to repay it, records show.
Last year, he told the Wall Street Journal that there have been multiple times when he was forced to stop construction because of a lack of financing. He also said that he has funded construction with cash from sales of other properties.
Profitable sales have been hard to come by for Niami lately. After listing an over-the-top Beverly Hills home dubbed “Opus” for $100 million, he sold it last year for $38.3 million. The buyer turned out to be Joseph Englanoff, one of Niami’s lenders for the project. Englanoff took control of the property, rebranded it and sold it for $47 million later that year.