The owner of Los Angeles’s most expensive real estate listing ever, a sprawling 157-acre undeveloped property in Beverly Hills dubbed “The Mountain,” has filed for bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Secured Capital Partners LLC, the current titleholder, sought chapter 11 protection on Wednesday at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles to prevent a key lender from foreclosing on the property. Bankruptcy court papers peg Secured Capital Partners’ total assets at somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. How much the lender is owed is the subject of a dispute that will now be decided by a bankruptcy judge. Ronald Richards, a lawyer for the property owner, said that filing for bankruptcy will provide a fair forum to determine how much the lender, the Mark Hughes Family Trust, is owed, potentially preserving value for other creditors. “This is chapter 11 that is designed to save close to $200 million in equity from being unfairly diverted to a single creditor,” he said Friday. The largely undeveloped hilltop was once listed for a record $1 billion, though that figure was later slashed to $650 million. Now, the property is slated to be sold to the highest bidder in a bankruptcy-court-supervised sale process.
