Five floors, 21 bedrooms and covering over 26,900 square feet at the top of a brand-new residential building, with sea views in Monaco. It appears a new global record for the most expensive residential real estate sale has been set with an apartment that has been purchased for a whopping £406 million by Ukraine’s richest person. The Ukranian billionaire’s apartment is located in a prestigious, newly reclaimed district of Monaco, where limited land and immense demand from global elites have driven prices to unprecedented levels, often exceeding €100,000 (£86,415.50) per square meter.
The five-story penthouse in the Le Renzo building within the glamorous Mareterra district of Monaco is now considered to be the most expensive residential real estate transaction in history. The apartment surpasses the previous record holder – a £270 million Chelsea mansion, Providence House, bought by Suneil Setiya, the British founder of Quadrature Capital.
Monaco is one of the smallest and most densely populated countries on earth.
To create more room, the Principality embarked on a massive £1.6 billion project to expand its territory by extending land into the Mediterranean Sea. Mareterra sits on this reclaimed land, adding roughly about 15 acres to Monaco’s total surface area.
The five-floor apartment has a private swimming pool, jacuzzi and at least eight parking spaces. It also has several and balconies and terraces overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
The sale was finalised in 2024, as confirmed by cadastral records and documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
Akhmetov’s holding company, System Capital Management (SCM), confirmed that it had acquired property within the development, but declined to disclose the purchase price or provide further details, The Kyiv Independent reported.
The agreement was reportedly signed shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Billionaire Rinat Akhmetov is Ukraine’s richest man with a net worth of of approximately $7.8 billion (£5.8 billion). He has previously been ranked among the world’s 500 richest individuals. Akhmetov is the owner and president of FC Shakhtar Donetsk, one of Ukraine’s most successful football clubs.
He is the founder and president of System Capital Management (SCM), the largest investment firm and industrial conglomerate in Ukraine. His assets are vast and historically dominated key sectors of the economy, including metallurgy, mining (Metinvest), and energy (DTEK).
The invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally altered both his business empire and his public role. His holding company has been heavily affected across multiple sectors.
According to Forbes, Russian forces destroyed plants owned by his mining and steel firm Metinvest and ravaged substations of his power generation firm DTEK. Over 1,400 of his employees have died due to the war.
The billionaire has said that his companies, which still operate, have donated $368 million (£274 million) in goods and have invested around $4 billion (£2.94 billion) in restoring infrastructure destroyed by Russia, building new facilities and modernising production.
