Peter Thiel bought an $18 million island estate in Miami that was once featured on MTV’s ‘The Real World’

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Tech billionaire Peter Thiel bought an $18 million house in Miami which was once featured as the main set in MTV’s “The Real World,” Business Insider has learned.

Thiel purchased the Real World house, and a similar house on the lot next door, in September through an anonymized LLC called Atlantic View Holdings, property records show. The property was previously owned by Jacques Nasser, the former president and CEO of Ford.

Thiel isn’t listed on the deed, but his new address was revealed in an email exchange with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, which Business Insider obtained through a public records request.

Suarez and Thiel ate lunch together at the Real World house on January 13.

Though it was Thiel who reached out first, their lunch had to be rescheduled from January 6 after Thiel “had an important obligation arise,” his executive assistant said in an email to Suarez’s office, which Business Insider obtained through a public records request.

That was the day that the US Presidential election results were certified in Congress. The day ended in infamy as supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump, who had held a rally in the morning, stormed the US Capitol in a riot that left five people dead. Facebook, on which Thiel is a board member, put a 24-hour freeze on Trump’s account on January 6, and extended the ban indefinitely the next day. 

“Peter sends his sincerest apologies!” the EA wrote a few days ahead of the January 6 meeting. The EA also sent over detailed instructions on how to get to his home—a white, palm-tree lined mansion, which happened to be featured in the 1996 season of MTV’s “The Real World: Miami.” 

The MTV television show, a pioneer of the reality genre, puts a group of strangers together and follows the daily dramas of co-habitation, from parties to feuds and breakups. In the Miami season, the housemates were given $50,000 to build a new company. They ultimately failed.

Lunch with Thiel was one of the many high-profile meetings that Suarez discussed publicly this month amid a flood of attention from digital nomads proselytizing Miami as the new tech capital of America.

Thiel’s Founders Fund colleague Keith Rabois, one of the city’s most ardent cheerleaders, recently moved to Miami full-time, and the venture capital firm is reportedly opening up a small office in the city.

Thiel’s two adjacent properties each feature waterfront swimming pools and docks. The properties, which are more than 10,000 square feet combined, have a total of 9 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, according to a real estate listing. Taxes on the properties in 2019 were roughly $99,000, according to the listing. 

Thiel purchased the property at a discount from the $19.9 million price at which it was listed in July.

At the time, Thiel’s purchase was the most expensive sale on the Venetian Islands in 2020, and the second most expensive sale ever, according Mansion Global.

But that title was quickly usurped by his colleague.

Rabois paid $29 million in December for his newly-built …read more

Source:: Business Insider