As a result of Rick Hilton’s personal success, a silver spooned hotel heir turned real estate tycoon who founded Hilton & Hyland, the Hilton name is as synonymous with high-end real estate in the finer zip codes across Los Angeles as it is with the international hotel chain that bears the Hilton family name.
Hilton has negotiated for countless high-profile buyers and sellers, including the $85 million sale of the Spelling estate in Holmby Hills to Formula One racing heiress Petra Ecclestone. His other ventures include the guard-gated Brentwood Country Estates enclave, where homeowners include Arnold Schwarzenegger and sitcom producer Kevin Bright, who sold the house for $120 million.
In a particularly plum pocket of Los Angeles’ ultra-tony Bel Air neighborhood, his most recent project is a brand-new spec-built mansion that merges classic architecture with modern-day styling and state-of-the-art technology.
According to tax records, the property was purchased from apparel mogul Treivush Menachem for $9,262,500 in July 2016, well below the asking price of .5 million. In the not-quite-two-third-acre parcel at that time, Ray J. designed a five-bedroom traditional home. The Hilton and his team soon offered the house as a rental, at $55,000 per month, while they laid the groundwork, worked on the design, secured permits, and secured a $26 million loan for the construction of a new home.
The glamorous mansion was built by Harrison Design, while the interior was designed by Nicole Gordon Studio and Hilton’s delightfully daffy, preposterously pampered but surprisingly down-to-earth wife Kathy, according to marketing materials. In spite of the global fame of her daughters, Paris and Nicky, (Mrs. Hilton, who has long maintained a relatively low public profile, is the breakout star on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and arguably the only reason to watch it now, according to some fans.)
In the wake of the house’s completion and complete furnishing, Rick and Kathy’s first-born son, 31-year-old Barron Hilton II, and his wife, Tessa Gräfin von Walderdorff Hilton, both agents at Hilton & Hyland, have both taken on the $55 million listing, keeping the entire thing in the family, including at least some of the sales commissions.
Featuring eight bedrooms — four family bedrooms, two guest bedrooms, a staff suite, and a main suite with multiple rooms — and 16 bathrooms, including four powder rooms, the stately three-story home is made up of bespoke craftsmanship and premium finishes.
In 2019, Hilton’s father, billionaire businessman W. Hilton, died at the age of 91. As a successor to the Hilton family’s eponymous hotel chain, Barron Hilton is sometimes referred to as the Jay Paley Residence. It was designed by Paul Revere Williams for CBS founder Conrad Hilton and built in the 1930s. In Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills neighborhood, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt bought Hilton’s hilltop mansion earlier this year for .5 million.
At Hilton’s elder’s Holmby Hills home, which has played a large role in the Hilton family’s lives, was filmed her 2000 Vanity Fair photo shoot, which she has called “iconic” and helped launch her career. His white-brick Georgian residence, which features symmetrical windows around the front door, is strikingly similar to the late Hilton’s late father’s Bel Air mansion, which was also built on a spec.
