Irish high-flyer who sold Beyoncé and Jay-Z their Bel Air mansion moves to ‘pinnacle’ real-estate agency

Tyrone McKillen, a son of the veteran Irish property developer Paddy McKillen, has been appointed founding broker of Official’s California office

Hollywood lifestyle: Beyoncé and Jay-Z bought their Bel Air mansion through Tyrone McKillen for $88 million. Photograph: Mason Poole/Tiffany & Co
Hollywood lifestyle: Beyoncé and Jay-Z bought their Bel Air mansion through Tyrone McKillen for $88 million. Photograph: Mason Poole/Tiffany & Co

The €58 million sale of Walford, on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin 4, to the developer Seán Dunne at the height of the boom remains the stuff of legend in Irish property circles. But for Tyrone McKillen it would seem to be the equivalent of just another day at the office.

Six years after he secured $88 million, or about €78 million, from Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, for a 30,000sq ft Bel Air mansion developed by his brother Dean, the Dublin-born, Los Angeles-based real-estate agent continues to sell the proverbial sunset to the United States’ rich and famous. In the past year or so alone McKillen has been involved in the $88 million sale of Owlwood, a lavish Italian revival-style mansion once home to the Hollywood stars Tony Curtis and, later, Cher, along with off-market deals in Malibu and Bel Air valued at $57 million and $58.5 million.

Tyrone McKillen
Snapped up: Tyrone McKillen has become founding broker for the California office of the real-estate agency Official

With sales figures like those it’s hardly surprising to see in the Hollywood Reporter that Tyrone, one of the veteran property developer Paddy McKillen’s three sons, has been snapped up himself by Official, a real-estate firm established last year by Oren and Tal Alexander. The so-called star agents have brought McKillen on board as a founding broker for their California office. The company currently operates within the equally rarefied reaches of south Florida, New York City and the Hamptons.

In a statement welcoming McKillen to the team, the company’s chief executive, Richard Jordan, said: “Tyrone is the ultimate exemplification of Official’s vision, defined by the quality of our talent, depth of our expertise and level of transcendent service provided to clients across the most important markets in the world.”

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Official describes itself as “the only global real estate brand comprised exclusively of agents synonymous with the pinnacle segment of the market”.

The pinnacle segment of the market is, of course, something Tyrone and his brothers, Dean and Paddy jnr, have long been attuned to and in tune with thanks to their father’s long-standing involvement in the celebrated Claridge’s, Connaught and Berkeley hotels, in London, and his ownership of the 600-acre Château La Coste, in France.

Ronald Quinlan

Ronald Quinlan

Ronald Quinlan is Property Editor of The Irish Times