La Quinta, a California desert community, has a new monarch of the hill. It is this brand-new home, which reportedly just sold for nearly $32 million, an area record. The knoll-top property, developed by mansion builder Gala Asher and completed in the past year, offers some of the finest views at the prestigious Madison Club, a guard-gated golf community frequented by industry titans and Hollywood celebrities.
According to public records, the new proprietor is Chicago-based Richard Chaifetz, a billionaire businessman, CEO of ComPsych, and owner of a Major League Pickleball team. The fact that Asher built this estate with its own deep purple pickleball court, a fashionable feature that surely appealed to the buyer, is perhaps fortunate.
There are approximately six bedrooms and eleven bathrooms in nearly 16,000 square feet of living space, as well as no fewer than twenty discrete seating and lounging areas on the ground floor alone. The listing describes the ultra-modern home as “hotel scale,” which is not an exaggeration. A floating staircase leads to the penthouse-style master suite of the home, which features a balcony directly overseeing one of the club’s artificial lakes.
Additionally, there is a games room, a cinema theater, a chef’s kitchen, and glass walls throughout. A veranda with multiple fire pits and an infinity pool overlooking the mountains, lake, and eighth fairway of the club’s Tom Fazio-designed golf course are located in the backyard.
The Madison Club, which was established in the late 2000s, has become the desert vacation destination of choice for a wide variety of celebrities, including the Kardashians and Lori Loughlin, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Nike’s Phil Knight, and Irving Azoff, Scooter Braun, and Sir Lucian Grainge.
Members of the Madison Club enjoy numerous amenities, including a private enclave with upscale dining options, a fitness center, and two guard-gated entrances. The monthly HOA dues are purportedly $1,652, and the membership initiation fee reportedly exceeds $500,000.
Asher has constructed and sold a number of properties at the Madison Club, including a $21 million mansion just two months ago. In addition, he has constructed some of the most extravagant new residences in Los Angeles, including a $61 million home recently sold to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck and a $100 million estate in Holmby Hills.
Regarding Chaifetz, he is not unfamiliar with luxury real estate. The 69-year-old and his wife Jill also own several condos at Chicago’s Trump Tower, a $34 million oceanfront estate in Florida, an apartment in New York City’s historic 15 Central Park West building, and their primary residence — a blufftop mansion in the Chicago suburbs.