Afrakhteh purchased the property late last year for just over $1.4 million and anticipates a total development cost of $9 million-$10 million.

“Every detail, from the carefully chosen materials to the thoughtfully curated finishes, contributes to an opulent & inviting lifestyle,” the listing copy reads. “This home will symbolize sophisticated living w/ its unique architecture & spacious interiors, offering a city retreat like no other.”

Corey Campbell with C-arc Design Group in Bloomfield Township is the architect for the proposed residence. The plans call for a home of 8,500 square feet with six bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom, an outdoor pool, cabana and barbecue area as well as several other high-end touches.

Should a buyer materialize for the proposed home just north of the Birmingham Country Club, a sale price near what’s asked would dwarf anything else sold in Oakland County in the last year and more. Multiple listing service figures for the last year show six homes sold at more than $5 million, with another house developed and built by Afrakhteh as the highest, selling late last year for $6.85 million.

A Bloomfield Hills home sold in April 2023 for just more than $10 million. That home, originally built in 1932, measures more than 10,000 square feet and sits on more than 2 acres. 

The proposed price makes for a natural progression of the high-end market in the area, according to Dan Gutfreund, the Birmingham-based real estate agent with Signature Sotheby’s International Realty who is marketing the property.

The Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills area may not have the density of wealth as areas such as Beverly Hills, Calif., the New York City suburbs on Long Island or in Connecticut, but there is no shortage of “ultra high net worth” people living in the Detroit area, Gutfreund said, pointing to the increasing number of cannabis company and auto executives living in the area, as well as other entrepreneurs.

Such would-be buyers would have no problem cutting a check for a “completely tricked out house.”

Gutfreund’s notion does seem to be playing out among real estate deals for the ultra rich. An April podcast by Bloomberg explored how high-end housing markets in places such as New York, Miami and overseas in London or Dubai have become disconnected from the local markets in something of an arms race among the wealthy.

“It’s more of an ego play,” Gutfreund said of the property he’s marketing and the clientele it’s being marketing toward. “They want the biggest home in Birmingham and this is it.”