When you’re worth over $230 billion, zoning laws start to look more like polite suggestions. Jeff Bezos’s $175 million Beverly Hills estate is surrounded by what may be the tallest residential fence made up of hedges in the city and most likely is breaking local code. While its seems the world’s fourth-richest man purchased the home in 2020 with the massive hedges intact, it doesn’t seem like he’s taken a hedge trimmer to them.
Fresh off his lavish Venetian wedding to Lauren Sánchez, the Amazon founder seems unfazed by the legal red tape. Rather than lower the green walls, Bezos might simply be paying $1,000 monthly fine — or not, as The New York Times has reported that Beverly Hills is sometimes lax in enforcing the ordinances on its wealthy residents.
According to Architectural Digest, the 10-acre compound, built in 1937 by Warner Brothers movie magnate Jack Warner, has been in a near-constant state of construction as Bezos imprints his vision on the storied estate he bought from recording and film executive David Geffen. High hedges included.
The start of the new decade proved busy for Bezos’ real estate ambitions. In February 2020, he paid a record $165 million for Geffen’s historic Beverly Hills mansion, featuring a 13,600-square-foot Georgian-style main house with antique wood flooring believed to be the very floor Napoleon stood upon when he proposed to Empress Joséphine.
The massive estate includes two guest houses, a nursery, three hothouses, a tennis court, swimming pool, expansive terraces, and a nine-hole golf course, complete with a grand motor court featuring its own service garage and gas pumps.
Several months later, Bezos expanded his Beverly Hills footprint by purchasing the adjacent 4,615-square-foot property for $10 million, a two-story traditional home with three bedrooms, four-and-a-half bathrooms, French doors, six brick fireplaces, and an outdoor brick courtyard with vegetable and rose gardens.
Local Los Angeles regulations cap residential fences at 3.5 feet in front yards, making Bezos’ sky-high security barrier decidedly illegal.
According to the city of Beverly Hills, specific ordinances govern development standards for walls, fences, and hedges, particularly in the exclusive Trousdale Estates area where the property sits. These regulations were designed to help property owners maintain views by limiting hedge and fence heights adjacent to neighboring properties.
Rather than tear down his privacy fortress, Bezos has chosen to absorb the financial consequences, if any.
For someone of his extraordinary wealth, these fines represent mere pocket change—a calculated cost of maintaining the ultimate privacy and security he desires for his family.
The Beverly Hills compound represents just one jewel in Bezos’ jaw-dropping $500 million real estate portfolio. His holdings span the country, including four separate apartments in Manhattan’s exclusive Central Park West building, properties in Malibu, Hawaii, Washington D.C., Seattle, a Texas ranch, and a substantial Florida mansion on Indian Creek, an affluent island home to celebrities like Gisele Bundchen and Ivanka Trump, according to Architectural Digest.
Bezos’ Seeming willingness to pay fines for property modifications isn’t unprecedented. His Washington, D.C., renovation project has generated its own costly violations.
While converting a 34,000-square-foot former textile museum into an 11-bedroom mansion complete with ballroom, wine cellar, whiskey tasting room, and movie theater, Fortune reports, construction crews accumulated $16,840 in parking tickets. The 564 violations, all promptly paid, resulted from workers routinely ignoring “No Parking” signs and occupying resident-reserved spaces during the extensive renovation process.
The fence controversy highlights an interesting dynamic between extreme wealth and municipal governance. While most residents would face pressure to comply with local ordinances, Bezos has essentially created a subscription model for privacy, treating monthly fines as an acceptable operating expense for his desired lifestyle.
For a man whose fortune dwarfs the GDP of many small nations, paying $12,000 annually for an illegal hedge represents a rational business decision rather than a financial burden.
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