Antilia ,a 27-story skyscraper on the pricey Altamount Road in Mumbai, is the most expensive home in the world, valued at upwards of $1 billion. Mukesh Ambani, an Indian business tycoon and multibillionaire, moved into the 400,000-square-foot mansion in 2012 with his wife and three children. A business tycoon and the wealthiest man in India with an estimated net worth of $22.3 billion, recently moved into the world's most expensive home with his wife and three children. The home, called Antilia, sits on Mumbai's tony Altamount Road.
It reportedly takes a staff of 600 to maintain the world’s most expensive home. But Mukesh Ambani makes sure that his employees are taken care of as well. There’s also an entourage room where security/body guards and other assistants can relax. The property sits on one of the most expensive roads to live on across the globe, the Altamount Road, in South Mumbai. Properties across this stretch go up to a whopping $25,000 per-square-meter. This is not only the poshest road in India but one of the poshest across the globe. Most people have criticized this structure, because rumor had it that it was laid by the slums, but that is not the case, although the slums can be seen from this house at a far distance.
Certainly the property - which has three helipads, six floors of parking and a series of floating gardens - is comfortable enough. According to reports, the Ambani family is concerned the building fails to conform with the ancient Indian architectural principles of vastu shastra, and has refused to move in for fear the home will curse them with bad luck.
The title of the most outrageously expensive property in the world still belongs to Mukesh Ambani's Antilia in Mumbai," Forbes said adding it is the world's most expensive home "far and away" with construction costs reported between a range of $one billion to two billion.
Putting Antilia's scale and cost into perspective, Forbes compared it to '7 World Trade Center', a 52-story tower that stands near Ground Zero in Manhattan with 1.7 million square feet of office space that was reportedly built for $2 billion.
The steel magnate is believed to own three homes on the high-security street known as 'Billionaires Row', including a neo-Georgian mansion near the Israeli embassy.
The house's construction has attracted some criticism from some who say it is far too grand for a city like Mumbai, where millions of people live in slums, and hundreds of thousands don't have a roof over their head. The house (if you can refer to a structure like that by a humble name like ‘house’) is a self-contained unit. Beginning with the lobby that has 9 elevators, Antilia has a spa, temple, ballroom (complete with gold and glass chandelier), private cinema, yoga studio, an ice cream room, several swimming pools, and a 2-story recreation center. There is also a snow room that showers artificial snowflakes on you! Just the place you’d want to head to when Mumbai’s heat becomes overpowering.
Between the time construction commenced, in 2008, and when it was completed, in late 2010, press coverage of the dwelling grew ever more fantastical and rabid. Does it really have its own air-traffic-control system and three heliports? Can it create its own weather? The intrigue peaked last October when The New York Times ran a prominent piece reporting that the family had yet to move in, perhaps due to glitches with respect to Vastu Shastra, the Hindu philosophy that guides directional alignments in architecture to create spiritual harmony.
