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Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Revealed as Buyer of $61.5M Hilton Mansion

The billionaire owns at least half a dozen homes worth more than $10 million each.

Eric Schmidt can’t stop buying mansions. Real estate site Dirt.com reports that the former Google CEO is the “mystery buyer” who purchased a 15,000-square-foot Los Angeles home owned by the late hotel heir Barron Hilton and formally known as the Jay Paley Residence. The tech billionaire bought another mansion last summer for $30 million, and in 2014 he purchased a French-chateau style home in the same posh neighborhood as the Paley Residence. In all, Schmidt owns at least half a dozen homes worth more than $10 million each. The Paley Residence went on the market five months ago for $75 million, but Schmidt got it for the discounted rate of $61.5 million. It boasts 13 bedrooms and 14.5 bathrooms, but it’s only the second- most expensive house sold this year in California; the other went to WhatsApp founder Jan Koum for $87 million. Paul R. Williams, an architect to a bevy of stars in the first half of the 20th century, built the house and 2.6-acre estate for the founder of CBS. Barron Hilton, heir to the Hilton hotel empire and its former CEO, bought the mansion in the 1960s and lived in it for more than 60 years. He died in 2019.