India’s richest man builds

world’s first billion-dollar home

An Indian businessman has built the world’s most expensive home – valued at $1 billion, with three helipads, its own air traffic control, a six-floor car park, a staff of 600, a four-storey hanging garden and a cinema.

The 173-metre tall mansion is called Antilia, after a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean, and has just been completed after seven years of construction.

Owner Mukesh Ambani, his wife Nita and three children are set to move into the opulent 27-floor building after an housewarming party on October 28, which boosts a guest list of India’s elite that reportedly includes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and star cricketer Sachin Tendulkar.

Home sweet home … Mukesh Ambani’s new home. Photo: Jay Hariani via WikiCommons

The building soars high above Mumbai, giving its future residents a panoramic view of the country’s financial capital, including its slums, and the Arabian Sea.

It was built to withstand military-grade explosions and an magnitude-8 earthquake, Indian media reported.

“I have seen several houses, including that of Lakshmi Mittal (an Indian steel tycoon and also one of the world’s richest men),” a businessman, who was not named, told The Times of India.

The home’s ballroom.

“But Antilia is marvellous. I remember the house having a Picasso painting, it was one of its kind.”

Mr Ambani, 53, is the world’s fourth richest man and has a personal wealth of about $27 billion, but is set to become the world’s richest in 2014, Forbes magazine estimated.

He is the chairman of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector company, which has interests in oil, gas, textiles, retail and telecommunications. He also owns the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket team, the Mumbai Indians.

While the home cost about $77 million to build, Mumbai’s growing property prices means Antilia is now estimated to be worth 15 times more – about $1 billion.

An Indian design magazine editor, Shiny Varghese, said Antilia was “so obscenely lavish” that she doubted many other wealthy folk would splash out in such a manner.

“But we are heading into the sort of culture where money is not a question when setting up a home,” Mr Varghese told The Guardian.

Mr Ambani is believed to have previously avoided overt displays of his wealth, although Indian media reported his purchase of a $60 million Airbus corporate jet for his wife as a 44th birthday present in 2007.

“Perhaps he has been stung by his portrayal in the media as an introvert,” Hamish McDonald, who has written a book about the family Mahabharata In Polyester, told the Guardian.

“Maybe he is making the point that he is a tycoon in his own right.”

Mr Ambani and his family are reportedly currently living in the more modest surrounds of a 14-storey apartment building.

The specs

Antilia, dubbed the “mansion in the sky” by the Times, was built in consultation with US architecture firms Perkins and Will & Hirsch Bedner Associates.

Its construction was reportedly influenced by Vaastu, an ancient Indian belief similarly to the Chinese’s Feng Shui.

Each level is twice as high as a normal floor.

No floors or rooms are the same, meaning the material used on one floor cannot be used in the construction of another level.

The first six floors are taken up by a car park that can hold up to 168 cars. The next floor is the lobby, with nine lifts servicing the building.

On the eight floor lies a 50-seat theatre. Another floor consists of a ballroom that has a ceiling mostly covered by crystal chandeliers.

Other floors contain a health spa with a gym and dance studio, swimming pools, lounges, a vehicle maintenance area and, of course, guest rooms.

The Ambani family will reside on the skyscraper’s top four floors, which takes up about 37,000 square metres.

The competition

Mr Ambani’s home is the world’s most expensive, but he is not the only person to have built himself a luxurious abode.

The Villa La Leopolda, on the French Riviera, was built in 1902 by King Leopold II of Belgium. It was last valued to be worth at least $US524 million and is reportedly owned by a Russian billionaire.

Dracula’s Castle, in Romania, was built in the 14th century and is now a tourist museum. It is perched on top of a 61-metre rock, overlooks the village of Bran and has about 60 rooms. It is valued at about $US135 million.

The Hearst mansion, also known as the Beverly House (not the Hearst Castle) in California, was valued at about $US165 million and has 29 bedrooms – but only three swimming pools. It is named after its former owner, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst.

It is now on the market for $US95 million after its current landlord filed for bankruptcy.

The One Hyde Park penthouse, in London, has only six bedrooms but was sold for a cool £140 million ($226 million) in August. It has bulletproof windows, panic rooms and a numberplate-recognition security system for its car park.

Its owners will be guarded by security guards who were trained by the SAS and served by staff from its neighbour, the Mandarin Oriental hotel.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

NRAS Property Workshop

The National Rental Affordability Scheme explained

GPS is proud to provide Australian investors with the opportunity to take part in the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) with properties all over Australia.  This workshop will teach you about NRAS and the excellent tax free rebates/incentives for the next 10 years.

By supplying you access to a website especially designed to provide detailed analysis you will be able to assess the benefits of NRAS on a range of effective investment properties nationally

Some of the topics to be covered in depth are:

What is a NRAS?

Why NRAS was introduced.

Government Tax Free Incentives.

What are the financial benefits to the Investors?

What properties are available in Perth under NRAS and how do they compare?

How does GPS assist in choosing the best NRAS product Australia Wide?

A case Study and a lot more.

Perth Workshop Details:

NRAS workshop:

When: Wednesday 8^th September 2010

Location: GPS Perth Office – Suite 1, 251 Hay Street, East Perth WA

Arrive: 5:45pm for Registration, Networking & Refreshments
6:00pm Start – 7.30pm

We extend the invitation to you and your associates who you believe would also benefit from this education. You may register your interest for this workshop in your State.

Please RSVP at your earliest to confirm your attendance to the workshop by simply completing the online form: www.gpsnetwork.com.au/NRAS-Property.asp

Best Regards,

The GPS Team

Property Investment Information - www.gpsnetwork.com.au

Search Investment Properties – www.guardianproperty.com.au

Published by Henry Sapiecha

CURRENT ANNIE ST PROJECT FOR SALE FLYER

Joint ventures and exchanges considered

Published by Henry Sapiecha

He operates a property investment system.

Anybody wishing to seek further info just needs to email me at

admin@acbocallcentre.com

I have copied it for readers & visitors of the ACBO stable of sites

to enjoy,  learn and perhaps motivate.

HE QUOTES

‘ACCIDENTAL MILLIONAIRE’

I just got back from a massive weekend in Sydney.

No it’s not what you are thinking, my party days are over, I was at the Global Real Estate Investor seminar.

Some might call that “work”, however for me, and I often say this, my work is pleasure.

Yes I really mean that, I love what I do.

But that’s not why I’m writing to you today, I want to tell you about a person I met at the seminar on the weekend.

Let’s call him, “The Accidental Millionaire.”

That’s one thing I love about my business, I get the opportunity to meet incredibly interesting people at events.

Let me tell you about this chance meeting…

A young gentleman caught my attention as I was speaking to a group of people on one of the breaks.

He came up to me and just handed me a glass of water.

He didn’t say much, I think it was along the lines of, “Looks like you might need this…”

He didn’t stay to be part of the group, he just handed me the glass of water and moved on.

At the lunchtime break I saw him walking my way and I simply stopped him to say, “Thank you for the glass water.”

He passed it off as being a small act of “nothing special” but then went on to ask me whether I had 10 minutes to spend with him, he wanted to run something by me.

Now, I’ve learnt a long time ago to never pre-judge anybody. You might think it’s quite easy to do but I can assure you it is in fact very difficult, and in some cases almost impossible.

To paint a picture for you, this guy was casually dressed, however I noticed that his clothes were very Italian-designer orientated. In other words, they looked expensive.

First, he complimented me on the event and the content, and then went on to tell me that he was serious about investing in the US market – but did not want to buy one house at the time, he wanted t o buy 100-200 houses all at once. He referred to the speakers comments about how large investors would buy direct from the banks at wholesale for deep discounts and quickly turn them around for huge profits.

Of course this immediately caught my attention and I started wondering who this guy was… and what has he done to put himself in a position to simply pull out big figures like that.

I wanted to find out if he was serious or just big-noting himself.

I told him I was impressed with his ambition and ability to think big, as well as putting it out there straight away.

Anyway, he told me that his current business was going great-guns and turning over in excess of $30 million per annum with a significant and healthy profit.

This guy is what I call a player.

It was obvious to him from what he had heard at the seminar that the US market was a big opportunity to make some very big returns on his capital and he was not just going to dabble with this – he was going to be very serious and strategic.

He openly told me that he had millions to invest and he was ready to go right now. I was more curious than ever to find out a little bit about his background.

It turns out that this guy is a massive fan of personal development and self-improvement philosophy. He was able to recite concepts and ideas from some personal development greats such as David Schwartz, the author of The Magic of Thinking Big (the first book he ever read), Napoleon Hill of  Think and Grow Rich… Zig Ziglar….. Jim Rohn….. Anthony Robbins….. Winston Churchill…. etc, etc, etc.

All of these success greats had great impact upon his journey to significant wealth.

I wanted to dig deeper into his psychology and find out what made him so successful.

Now this guy is turning over $30 million and he says to me that he didn’t actually feel as though he was hugely successful, he was just taking advantage of the opportunities that were being presented to him.

I think that’s very instructive, anybody from the outside looking in would definitely see him as a success, however he just saw himself as a person of action and taking advantage of opportunity… Interesting.

I wanted more specifics, so I asked him for 3 reasons that he thought had made him achieve the results that he had achieved…

He said three things…

1. The ability to think big.
2. The burning desire.
3. Outcome driven.

I was curious about one thing… He didn’t mention his ability to take massive action. I quizzed him about this…

“Oh!” he said. “That comes naturally to me, I didn’t even think of that… But now that you mention it, I suppose that plays a big part in what I do.”

Now this is very instructive, and many millionaires such as this guy do this subconsciously… Meaning they don’t really know they’re doing it. That’s why it’s sometimes really difficult for a wealthy person to explain what makes them successful.

He has gotten himself to the stage where taking action is normal, natural and simply part of his process.

This is a big lesson for anyone who wants to be rich, wealthy and happy. Your actions have to become part of what you do daily, without thinking about it.

All this most likely developed for this guy during his time that he spent with the self-improvement greats – which obviously changed his psychology greatly.
There are big lessons here, let me summarise them for you…

• Never pre-judge… Be curious about the people that you interact with. You never know who you might be talking to.
• Add value… His gesture of giving me a glass of water was small in the scheme of things, but how often do people do that?
• Mindset… It’s amazing that most millionaires have similar stories of learning from the great masters of the past.
• The ability to think big… If you’re going to think, why not think big?
• Burning desire… This is what underpins the philosophy of “Failure is not an option… Just a learning experience.”
• Outcome driven… You’ll always find a way if you’re outcome-driven. You wont stop until you’ve reached your goal.
• Action-orientated… Turn the often difficult task of action into something that comes naturally, easily and effortlessly.

So there you have it, a chance meeting with a self-proclaimed accidental millionaire.

PS – Things happen for a reason.

HOW MANY OF YOU OUT THERE RELATE TO THIS STORY…??

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 11th Feb 2010