Billionaire Rick Caruso has put his oceanfront mansion in Malibu on the market for $40 million. The 7,300 square foot property was used as a test for the design of Caruso's Montecito, California resort Rosewood Miramar Beach. The Montecito property was built in the same Cape Cod style as his Malibu home. Caruso bought the property in 2008 for $11.3 million and remodeled it from the studs up. The five-bedroom home is a classic whitewashed beachfront mansion with a stone driveway and black and white marble tiled floors inside. The black and white theme continues into the kitchen where a black island and white cabinets dominate the room. On the deck, a retractable black and white striped shade covers the space. The home also has a theatre with two balconies. The fountain in the entry courtyard was imported from France.
Caruso is a native of Los Angeles. His father, Henry Caruso, was the founder of Dollar Rent-A-Car. Rick graduated from Loyola High School in Los Angeles in 1976. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1980 and Pepperdine University's Law School in 1983. After law school, Caruso got a job as a real estate attorney. However, Caruso found that the law wasn't for him, so he went out and bought a duplex in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westwood and worked on renovating it on the weekends. Caruso made the decision to turn his weekend hobby into a career, and he founded his real estate firm, Caruso Affiliated, in 1987.
Today, Caruso is best known as the developer and owner of the Los Angeles shopping center the Grove. The Grove has an electric trolley that traverses the length of the mall, cobbled walkways, and a fountain made by the same people who made the Bellagio's famous fountains in Las Vegas. During the Christmas season, it snows nightly in the mall. The Grove has a dubious reputation with Angelinos who love to hate it, but it doesn't keep them away from the mid-city shopping center. The 19-year-old mall has 49,000 visitors every day. For perspective, that means the mall gets more daily visitors than Disneyland! This is, of course, pre-pandemic level numbers. Nonetheless, The Grove is one of the most lucrative malls in the U.S. based on sales per square foot. Caruso also developed The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California. This suburban Los Angeles shopping center opened in 2008 and also has a fountain with dancing waters and a trolley. Rick Caruso today remains the CEO and sole shareholder of privately held Caruso Affiliated. He does not have any business partners or outside investors. He owns about a dozen malls including the aforementioned Grove and Americana as well as Palisades Village in the Pacific Palisades and the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort in Montecito.
For all his real estate development projects, Caruso has amassed a net worth of $4 billion and has all the homes and toys that go along with his incredible net worth. In addition to his homes, he also owns a Gulfstream G550 jet and a 216-foot yacht named Invictus that is worth $100 million.
