In 2016, ‘Porcelain’ musician Moby bought a 1920s Los Angeles home for $3.4 million, renovated it, and sold it two years later for $4.91 million, a $1.51 million price increase

In 2016, electronic music pioneer Moby, best known for his hits “Porcelain” and “Play,” bought $3.4 million for a 1920s English Traditional-style home tucked into the Oaks neighborhood of Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Two years later, after a top-to-bottom renovation, he sold it for $4.91 million, a gain of roughly $1.5 million over his purchase price, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The buyer? None other than Leonardo DiCaprio. A neat little celebrity home-buying story, perhaps. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find a more interesting tale of the US housing market, where house-flipping for profit has become increasingly common even as affordability has tightened for everyday buyers.

A profit margin to make flippers envy


Moby’s $1.5 million gain on a $3.4 million purchase works out to a roughly 44 percent increase in sale price over purchase price. For comparison, ATTOM Data Solutions’ year-end 2024 US Home Flipping Report found the typical home flipper nationwide gross about $72,000 on a median investor purchase price of $243,000, a return of roughly 26 percent before accounting for renovation and holding costs. By that measure, Moby’s sale price markup was close to double the typical investor flip’s gross return, though his figure, unlike ATTOM’s, doesn’t subtract what he spent on the renovation itself, so the two aren’t directly comparable.

Celebrity buyers and sellers tend to have different rules than the average American, however. A recognizable name, extensive remodeling on a previously owned home, and even the prestige of the neighborhood all contribute to a final sale price that’s higher than what most would consider fair market value. With that being said, Moby’s flip still fits into a broader trend of everyday Americans buying, renovating, and selling homes for a tidy profit.

Not every renovation is worth its weight in gold

Remodeling an acquired home is an important part of any house-flipping enterprise, but not all renovations are created equal. Per the National Association of Realtors’ 2022 Remodeling Impact Report, improvements such as refinishing hardwood floors provide the best value for money invested: for every dollar spent, you get back an estimated $1.47 upon resale. Other improvements, however, do not provide nearly as much value: while a full kitchen remodel might set you back several tens of thousands of dollars, the value it adds to a home is nowhere close to that of a hardwood floor restoration. Moby, whose renovations were focused on the kitchen and landscape gardening, with minimal changes to the home’s 1926 architectural elements, putting his improvements in the lower-return category by the report’s own framework, not the high-return one.

The part of the story that stings

While Moby appears to be a proud owner of a renovated property and several million dollars richer than he was before, that’s not the story for everyone. According to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2024 was a challenging year for prospective home-buyers: the median age of a first-time homebuyer was a record-high 38 years, the number of existing home fell to their lowest point since 1995, and the homeownership rate dropped to its lowest it has been since 2016.

As much as Moby’s flip story can be seen as a shining example of a house-flipping success, another interpretation takes a dimmer view of the state of the American housing market: one where buying a home outright to renovate and sell or even live in is a much more challenging endeavor than it was before. For millennials and young professionals, buying a house is no longer a thing to be done after college, but rather a distant goal to be achieved once they reach their 40s.

The bottom line

None of this is meant to disparage Moby or his house-buying and renovation efforts. These things are, in part, out of his hands, the same way that everyone’s efforts are. This is more a matter of context and perspective: if a house flipper’s success is reported in the press, the question worth asking is how this person represents the general American buyer. And in 2024, the latter appears to be a much more challenging proposition than it was in 2016.