Coined \u201ciceberg homes\u201d to indicate that a significant portion of living space is underground and hidden beneath the surface, these amenity-filled subterranean levels include wine cellars, home theaters, luxury gyms, and whatever else you can think of\u2014including separate spaces for romance and intimacy. Some people even add in natural lightwells and skylights to flood the iceberg with California sunshine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These homes were also a thing in London for years, too, among the city\u2019s elite<\/a> who couldn\u2019t build up or out. Then, roughly five years ago, San Francisco Magazine <\/em>published a story<\/a> on iceberg homes. The author wrote: \u201cIn Palo Alto, as in many other affluent yet zoning-constrained enclaves around the Bay Area, homeowners are going underground\u2026the once-lowly basement has become the hottest area in home design, resulting in a flotilla of square-footage-concealing iceberg houses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In Los Angeles, no one calls them icebergs. And they aren\u2019t always called finished basements either, even if that\u2019s basically what they are. Calling it a basement, \u201cthat\u2019s considered kind of lowbrow,\u201d Ernie Carswell, a luxury real estate agent based in Beverly Hills, said. \u201cWe call it the lower level.\u201d The Wall Street Journal<\/em> once labeled<\/a> them McBasements, but the jury\u2019s still out on whether the SoCal upper echelon will go for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Arzuman Brothers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Carswell could be onto something because these luxe underground configurations don\u2019t give off damp basement vibes, they\u2019re much cooler and exemplary of Los Angeles opulence. Some house billiard rooms and wine caves, some have bowling alleys and movie theaters, some have gyms and saunas, some have bars, some have bedrooms if there are lightwells, and some are straight out of a \u201cJames Bond movie,\u201d as Carswell put it. In all posh neighborhoods where multimillion dollar homes line the streets, \u201cit\u2019s luxurious to have a bunker,\u201d Carswell said. Maybe they\u2019re taking a page out of the Silicon Valley billionaire playbook<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say how much it costs to build a lavish basement, or whatever you want to call it, but it can be more than $1 million. Loosely speaking, if you were to build a 2,000 square foot lower level, it could come out to about $1.5 million, said Andrew Vaitkevicius, sales and acquisitions manager for Arzuman Brothers, a luxury homebuilder. Or they could cost even more, maybe a double-digit million figure, according to Chris Pozil, a senior project manager for McClean Design, a\u00a0contemporary residential design firm. It\u2019s because of how much work goes into them\u2014the foundation, the finishing. <\/p>\n Vaitkevicius called the basements an almost \u201csecond house,\u201d and they\u2019re prevalent in neighborhoods such as Bel Air, Beverly Hills, the Sunset Strip, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and Toluca Lake. Arzuman Brothers is building about 20 homes in Los Angeles at the moment, and about half will have basements that are fully fledged living spaces, he said. And in those neighborhoods, it makes sense because the sky\u2019s the limit for how much you can sell for, more or less.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Arzuman Brothers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Vaitkevicius mentioned two homes in Toluca Lake, a small neighborhood in the city, seemingly low-key, his company developed. Both homes were sold for almost $5 million; both had cushy basements. One was an almost 5,400 square foot house with eight bedrooms and five bathrooms; its basement had high ceilings, a bedroom, a bathroom, a movie theater with two rows of black leather reclining seats, and a blue felt pool table. The other, a 6,700 square foot house with five bedrooms and six bathrooms, had a movie theater in its basement, too. It happened to be sold to a Hollywood producer, who apparently hosts private premieres, Vaitkevicius said. Apart from that, the lower level had a makeshift health, wellness, and fitness center, with a sauna and massage table.\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Arzuman Brothers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photo courtesy of Arzuman Brothers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a lot of the homes Pozil\u2019s firm has designed, the basements are around half the size of the entire house. They\u2019ve built basements with nightclubs bigger than some in the city, tennis and basketball courts, hidden sex rooms, and secret doors and spiral staircases leading to emergency bunkers, he said. And if its on \u201ca really steep hillside, we can almost build into the hillside in a way that allows us to kind of have multi-story basements that from the street level,\u201d Pozil said. \u201cIt looks like a typical one-or two-story home, but then if you see a drone shot looking at the hillside, it looks like a four-or five-story home.\u201d<\/p>\n Building an iceberg home seems to have less to do with skirting zoning laws, and more to do with preserving stunning views<\/a>; although Vaitkevicius and Pozil warned there is a limit to how big your house can be in the city. Still, California is somewhat well known for trying to get around housing policy when it can, maybe through turning a neighborhood into a historic district<\/a> or protesting multifamily development<\/a>. The state is the epicenter of the country\u2019s housing crisis, and it\u2019s been materializing for decades<\/a> because of local control and an inability to build more homes. So you might have thought iceberg homes would be no different, and maybe they aren\u2019t. But in some neighborhoods, \u201cour limitations are all about views,\u201d Carswell said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want homes higher than two stories in hillside neighborhoods because then you\u2019re going to block your uphill neighbor\u2019s view of the ocean, or of the city, or of the Getty Museum.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n So the rich build down, and it\u2019s easier. There aren\u2019t many limitations on excavating, aside from one, which has to do with how much dirt can be removed from a single home, to ensure stability for any neighborhood\u2019s foundation, Carswell said. And it can be about 200 truckloads of dirt that need to be hauled out, Vaitkevicius explained, but the dirt needs to be reinforced as it\u2019s happening. Once you drill down, there are steel posts that have to be installed, and then concrete needs to be poured in. So it is expensive to excavate and it takes time, and that\u2019s why these lower levels can be so exorbitant. But it can bump up your home value, which everyone tends to love.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, you won\u2019t have more below ground than above ground, despite what calling it an iceberg home suggests. Carswell happens to be the president of his neighborhood\u2019s homeowners association, which needs to approve all building plans from developers and homeowners, and lower levels can be no larger than what\u2019s above ground where he is, and even then they typically trim it a bit more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For him, the ritzy trend really began post-Great Financial Crisis, once developers returned to the city. They became \u201cmore and more glamorous and braggadocious,\u201d he said. Before, it was \u201cwhat we called California basements,\u201d Carswell said. \u201cIt was just a hot water heater down there and electrical boards and rat traps.\u201d But now, some of his affluent buyers want their homes to have lower levels; it\u2019s on their checklist, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Vaitkevicius, it really began during the pandemic; people looked at homes differently, he said. \u201cThey want to have everything in the home,\u201d Vaitkevicius said, \u201cso you can have your own compound without needing to go out.\u201d <\/p>\n It isn\u2019t always about grandeur though\u2014typical neighborhoods can have lower levels, too, Carswell said, but they\u2019ll mostly be one or two bedrooms rather than entire living spaces fit for LA\u2019s elite, per se.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/IMG_4190.jpg?w=1440&q=75\"\/)
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