Markus Persson paid a Beverly Hills record for a fully furnished house the year Microsoft bought his studio; twelve years, a nightclub and a recording studio later, he is asking for precisely the same again.
The most expensive house in a city is seldom the cleverest place to keep a fortune, and Markus Persson has spent twelve years demonstrating this in considerable comfort. The Swedish programmer who made Minecraft has listed his Trousdale Estates mansion at $70m, which, as Dexerto noted, is the same sum he handed over in 2014. Realtor.com ran the listing under a headline promising to reveal what he paid, a courtesy to readers who enjoy doing their own subtraction. The subtraction comes to nothing.
Nothing, in nominal terms, is a very particular result. Twelve years of inflation turn a flat price into a quiet reduction, and in the meantime the house has gained a recording studio and a private nightclub. A man who sold his company to Microsoft has never needed the place to earn its keep, and the asking price says so with admirable candour. Trophy property is a way of spending money slowly, beside a pool.
A record with the cutlery included
The house was finished before anyone lived in it, which is the usual arrangement at this altitude. Bruce Makowsky, who made a fortune selling accessories on QVC before turning developer, built it on spec. CBS MoneyWatch reported that it had been complete for about four months when Persson bought it, which made him the first person to sleep there. Makowsky had asked $85m; Persson paid some way below that, and the price took in the furnishings, down to a commissioned Bentley furniture set. The listing agents’ own inventory that winter ran to gold cutlery and a candy room.
He had spent the autumn selling rather than buying. In September 2014 Microsoft bought Mojang, the studio Persson founded in 2009, for $2.5bn, and he had already said he would leave once the deal was done. Bloomberg, reading Mojang’s annual reports, put his stake at about 71 per cent. The departure had begun earlier: in 2012 he handed lead development of Minecraft to Jens Bergensten, so the sale tidied up an exit that was two years old. CNBC, covering the purchase that December, noted that he was newly single and called the place a bachelor pad. A year later he was on the Forbes billionaire list.
The price set records in more than one direction. The John Aaroe Group, whose Sally Forster Jones and Katia De Los Reyes acted for Persson, said it was a record for Trousdale Estates, and Curbed called it a record for a home in Beverly Hills. A story that he outbid Beyoncé and Jay-Z has travelled with the house ever since and turns up again in this week’s headlines; the couple reportedly toured it more than once, and the contemporary reports of the sale on CBS and CNBC leave them out. Persson, for his part, bought the house and never needed the anecdote.
Same agents, new nightclub
The house has come home to the people who sold it. The listing is shared between Aaron Kirman and Katia De Los Reyes of Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California and Branden and Rayni Williams of the Beverly Hills Estates. De Los Reyes was on Persson’s side of the table in 2014. Branden Williams, then at Hilton & Hyland, was one of the agents selling it to him, alongside Ben Bacal of Rodeo Realty. Few houses are sold twice by overlapping casts, and fewer still at an identical figure, so the first viewing must have had a faint air of reunion.
The proposition is larger than the one he bought. There are eight bedrooms, 15 bathrooms and two swimming pools on nearly an acre, and Persson has added the recording studio and a nightclub with a DJ booth. The Wall Street Journal reported that he spent millions on upgrades, without putting a figure on it, which makes the flat price flatter than it first appears. He is also asking less than Makowsky did. The seller who paid below the developer’s ask has opened, twelve years on, at the number the developer accepted.
Kirman gives the reason for selling as Persson’s diary: he has not been spending much time in Los Angeles. On what buyers at this level want, the agent was precise.
“They’re looking for something that sets them apart and cannot easily be replicated,” Aaron Kirman told The Real Deal.
He also told the Wall Street Journal that luxury markets are slower than they used to be, and that Persson is committed to selling. It is an unusually frank remark from an agent holding a record listing, and it reads like a man setting expectations before anyone else can.
The timing has given the internet something to do. Dexerto observed that the listing arrived days before Californians vote on a proposed one-time tax on billionaires who lived in the state on 1 January 2026, and some accounts on X framed the sale as an exit. No evidence connects the two. The only reason anybody has put on the record is Kirman’s, and it concerns where Persson spends his time.
What standing still is worth
Celebrity provenance is meant to add a premium, and Persson’s is complicated. In 2019 a Minecraft update removed the splash-text messages that credited him, and Microsoft told Variety that his comments and opinions did not reflect those of the company or of Mojang, leaving him out of the game’s tenth-anniversary plans. A buyer at this level pays for rooms, pools and the postcode. The previous owner’s name comes with the keys, and the market will price it as it sees fit.
What the flat figure measures, then, is the top of the market rather than the man. Persson paid a record in 2014. The Real Deal reports that if the house fetches its asking price, it will set the Beverly Hills record for 2026. The number that bought the city’s summit then would buy it again now, which says a good deal about how far the summit has moved. At the very top, a house is worth roughly what the last record was.
That is no hardship for the seller, who bought a furnished house as a newly single man with a fresh fortune and has had twelve years of pools, a studio and his own dance floor for the price of keeping the money still. Houses of this sort were never meant to compound. They are meant to be lived in loudly and sold quietly, and Persson has managed the first part with some enthusiasm.
The second part depends on one buyer with the right sum and no particular interest in the anecdote. Whoever pays will get a nightclub, a recording studio and a record that has been set before, at the same number.
