Dream Multimillion-Dollar Coachella Crash Pads
Hundreds of thousands of music lovers are heading to the California desert for the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival over the next two weekends.
As well as spending lots of money on questionable fashion choices (flower headbands, over-the-top headdresses and extreme fringe comes to mind), those not wanting to sleep in a tent will have also had to pick up a pricey rental with an Instagram-worthy backdrop, fueling a massive Airbnb boom in the desert.
This trend has in turn driven up home sales over the past few years as entertainment and fashion executives alike snap up mid-century abodes by noted architects for a fraction of what they would cost in Los Angeles, using them as investment properties or second homes.
“Since Coachella, the popularity and focus on Palm Springs and the surrounding areas has almost quadrupled,” says Marc Sanders, a real estate broker at The Agency.
“We have a whole different clientele that comes here now. We’re getting a lot of hipsters from Los Angeles and a lot of people who are really into nature, as well as the countless events that are taking place here.”
Here are some of the most notable properties currently on the market near the festival.
The Lady Gaga House
Price: $5.48M
This Rancho Mirage house is no stranger to celebrities, having hosted Lady Gaga when she headlined last year’s festival.
In fact, the house, which is on sale for $5.48 million, has been somewhat of a money-maker for its current owners, who charge as much as $60,000 a weekend during the festival, although Lady Gaga’s stay was a gift from Airbnb.
Set on 1.2 acres of land and built in 2008 to feel like a private resort, the seven-bedroom guard-gated home is certainly suited to the lavish tastes of celebrities.
While the interiors are luxurious, with a private wine room and a master suite complete with chandeliers hanging over the bath tub, it is the outside that is the true show-stopper.
To start, there’s an outdoor living room called the “California room” which features stunning mountain views over the grand resort-style pool, while the master suite has its own outdoor private spa.
Elsewhere, there are dual outdoor fire pits, multiple outdoor seating areas including entertainment pavilion and an outdoor kitchen.
The Gucci House
Price: $7M
It’s not only an opulent Manhattan penthouse that members of the Gucci family are trying to sell.
Patricia Gucci, the granddaughter of Gucci founder Guccio Gucci, is looking to offload her 18-acre, 10-bedroom Moroccan-inspired estate set atop a mountain in Palm Desert that she had built as a vacation home for her family around a quarter of a century ago.
The British-born fashion heiress is selling up as she spends much of her time in Geneva and doesn’t get to visit the very private and secluded estate as much as she used to now that her three daughters are grown up.
In fact, for much of the year the house that Gucci built is offered as a weekly rental and has proven to be particularly popular during Coachella.
Renters have to be cash rich, though, as Gucci charges $10,000-a-night, with a minimum five-night stay required. There’s also an additional $300-a-day charge to use the swimming pool and spa.
As well as the pool and spa, other features include a tennis court, hiking trails and two guest properties. Inside the two-story main house, which boasts panoramic views of the Coachella Valley as well as canyon vistas, there’s a bar, an art studio and a movie theater.
The Wellness Retreat
Price: $1.995M
If you want a rest from partying, then why not buy your own wellness retreat? Sagewater Spa in Desert Hot Springs, about 30 minutes away from the festival, is now on offer for just under $2 million.
Since its owners Rhoni Epstein and Cristina Pestana transformed it from a roofless, dilapidated motel into a luxe spa 18 years ago, the midcentury property has served as a zen spot for musicians and festivalgoers alike.
Guests at the boutique hotel and spa can enjoy the geothermal pools and plethora of spa treatments, before retreating to one of eight luxe rooms — five with desert views and three with expansive views of the San Jacinto Mountains.
“A lot of music industry people had rented the whole spa,” Epstein told WWD. “We have quite a lot of celebrities staying with us and there’s a back road to Coachella so they miss the traffic and they soak with us during the day. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, they leave. They come back at night and soak again. It makes Coachella a little bit less work and more relaxing.”
While some potential buyers are interested in keeping it as a hotel and spa, a couple of families have been looking at it for their own private desert retreat.
The Super Producer’s House
Price: $9M
Another property that has certainly had its fair share of celebrity visitors is the Palm Desert home of late Hollywood super producer Jerry Weintraub.
Built as Weintraub’s winter playground, the “Oceans 11” franchise producer’s six-bedroom home is located in the exclusive golf community of Bighorn and was designed to look as though it emerged from the nearby mountains.
Unlike others, it’s not being offered as a short-term rental despite multiple requests so any festivalgoers wanting to show off the grandiose home to their friends will have to make an eye-watering $9 million purchase. This price, however, is a lot cheaper than when it first hit the market, asking $16 million.
Clearly no expense was spared when the house was built, with a pool that allowed Weintraub to swim around the whole property, while glass doors electronically open in the master suite so he could step out of bed and straight into the pool, giving it an extra James Bond-esque touch.
Then there’s The Ocean’s Club, complete with a bar modeled on the one in London’s Claridges Hotel, one of Weintraub’s favorite haunts.
The club, which hosted the likes of Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Catherine Zeta Jones over the years, also has a card table, 10 flat-screen televisions and an adjoining media room.
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