Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate The Masiello Gr

In honor of Independence Day, Yolanda decided to venture off the beaten celebrity real estate path. Let's weave a story web about one of our many international neighbors who came here to experience the opportunities available in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Or, more likely, came here because Beverly Hills is a nice place to have a $15 million vacation home.

Our boy Nile Niami, whom we have discussed many a time on this blog, has been unusually quiet on the real estate front this year. Maybe it's because he's hard at work completing his $500 million spec-mall beast, or maybe it's because he's engaged in a nasty divorce with his soon-to-be-ex Yvonne. But he did find time to shed a big house in the prime Beverly Hills Flats for a whopping $15.6 million.

Keep in mind that this house is not a ground-up Niami creation like his STD-filled Opus spec-mansion in Trousdale Estates, currently listed at a sanity-shredding $100 million. No, this house was built way back in 1986 — a year of dubious architectural integrity if there ever was one. Still, this place isn't really so bad. More like just a tad boring.

Anyway, Mr. Niami bought this "French Country" house for $11,900,000 back in August 2014 and quickly gave it one of his slick makeovers. Transformed into a "French Modern" estate, the house now looks sexy — if a starkly minimalist contemporary look is what turns you on, of course. In July 2016, Mr. Niami tossed it back on the market with an asking price of $17,950,000. After a long eight months, he finally unloaded the beast for the afore-mentioned and still-impressive $15,600,000.

Naturally, the big-bucks buyer's identity is shielded behind a mysterious corporate entity calling itself "Amplitude of Blessings LLC". Yolanda initially suspected the buyer was a tech person from Silicon Valley because the LLC links to a San Francisco address, but turns out that is not the case. The new owner, Yolanda happens to know, is an obviously very wealthy lady from Indonesia named Judith Soeryadjaya, founder of the Credo Group.

Yolanda's intel indicates that the house is not intended as Ms. Soeryadjaya's primary residence but is rather mainly for the use of a young woman named Angelica Nathania Tan. Below is a photo of Ms. Tan, who we think — but are not 100% certain — is Ms. Soeryadjaya's daughter.

Lazy loaded image — **Angelica Nathania Tan (second from left) at Judith Soeryadjaya's mansion in Indonesia**

Anywho, time for a peek at Ms. Tan and/or Ms. Soeryadjaya's big new $15.6 million mansion in one of the Flats neighborhood's best pockets, just a quick skip south of Sunset Boulevard.

A comparison of prior and current listing photos reveals that Mr. Niami made precious few changes — beyond a new coat of paint — to the exterior of the home, which public records says measures 9,200-square-feet with 7 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. Those stats mean this is a bonafide mansion, y'all.

Mr. Niami did, however, relandscape the whole kit-and-caboodle. He also repaved the driveway and removed the old north/south facing tennis court to add a big grassy backyard, an expensive undertaking but one that Yolanda applauds. One of our (many) pet peeves is seeing some of these mansions with sport courts and pools crammed up against the main house. It's just so gosh-darn tacky!

What was once a very banal and classically overwrought '90s interior has been pared down to the max. We love the trendy ebonized wood floors and the marble fireplace, but if you ask Yolanda it's just a bit too austere for our personal taste. We'd like a bolt of color, a dash of pizazz, but we are not finding it here.

The hardwood floors continue into the kitchen, which has also been redone to the point of being utterly unrecognizable. There are new top-grade appliances, new cabinetry, and a new center island with bar-style seating and a wooden countertop. The formal dining room seats eight.

The master bedroom features the same blacks/greys/whites interior motif as the rest of the home and comes equipped with another marble fireplace and a sitting area. Elsewhere there is a giant, glass-enclosed and temperature-controlled wine cellar.

Mr. Niami allowed the pool area to remain mostly unchanged through his renovation, but those gorgeous olive trees are all-new. The more than half-acre lot is double-gated out front and also gated at the rear (for access to the back alleyway). Naturally, the property is equipped with a litany of smart home and security features/systems.

For some reason, this western part of the Beverly Hills flats has long been particularly popular with wealthy Indonesian power players. Almost directly across the street from Ms. Soeryadjaya's new pad is a much larger 20,000+ square-foot mega-mansion that has been owned since 2007 — when he bought it for $17,500,000 — by Franky Widjaja. And just around the corner on Sunset is a large tennis court estate that was purchased back in 2012 for $14,520,000 by Aldo Brasali. That's just to name a couple.

Oh, one more thing. Y'all kiddies are probably wondering where Ms. Soeryadjaya gets all her money from, right? Well, Yolanda is gonna tell you. But only if you sit up straight and pay attention, okay?

Our Ms. Soeryadjaya is the youngest child of the late William Soeryadjaya, a billionaire who is widely regarded as one of Indonesia's all-time most successful businessmen.

William Soeryadjaya's bio reads like a cheesy Hollywood film script: orphaned at an early age, he dropped out of school in his teens and struggled to survive in his 20s by selling anything he could, like, say, mattresses. He served a prison term in his 30s and in that time became extremely religious, as he would remain for the rest of his life. It wasn't until he was 35 that he founded Astra International from scratch and built it into what is currently Indonesia's largest conglomerate.

Mr. Soeryadjaya passed away in 2010 and we're not sure what his daughter's exact net worth is, but it is most assuredly well into the nine figures. Her older brother Edwin is listed on Forbes with a reported $780 million to his name.

Amplitude of blessings, indeed…

Listing agent: Drew Fenton, Hilton & Hyland
Judith Soeryadjaya's agent: Juli Udem, Regent Brokerage Co.