Priceline.com Chairman Shelling Out $388,500 Rent for 21-Day Holiday

ASPEN, CO-It’s most likely a new record for a rental price, even for this glitzy ski resort.

Priceline.com chairman Richard Braddock, and his wife, Susan, are shelling out $388,500 in rent for a 21-day holiday at a trophy estate in Aspen. The billionaire couple from New York City signed a short-term lease for the Peak House, a 23,000-sf home that sits on the highest lot on Red Mountain, 1,000 feet above the ski resort.

The Braddocks’ three-week vacation starts Dec. 23 and ends Jan. 13. Priceline.com lets shoppers name their price for everything from hotel rooms to airline tickets. The price being paid for the home equates to $18,505 per day, or almost $130,000 per week. For that amount of money, they will have use of several SUVs in the home’s 15-car garage, a personal chef and daily maid service. But, they are only allowed to have a maximum of 12 overnight guests and smoking and pets are not allowed on the premises. The Braddocks also can’t taste any of the wine in the private wine cellar.

The only reason this information is available is because the Aspen estate is mired in a lawsuit in US District Court in Denver. The home was purchased in 1997 for $19.7 million by Viktor Kozeny, a Czech financier accused of fraud and racketeering by unhappy investors in an alleged scheme to privatize the state-owned oil company in the former republic of Azerbaijan. Kozeny, who now lives in the Bahamas, denies any wrongdoing and says he is just as much of a victim as his investors.