$65M Malibu Mansion: Most Expensive Auction

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — A mansion in California's high-priced beachfront city of Malibu is set to be the most expensive U.S. home ever to be sold at auction.

The 10,500-square foot home was originally put up for sale in 2008 at a price tag of $65 million – an asking price later reduced to $35 million.

Unable to find a bidder, realtor Carol Bird of Westside Estate Agency set an auction for Sept. 18 in hopes of finding someone to buy the expansive home on Carbon Beach – a stretch of sand known colloquially as "Billionaire's Beach."

The bidding will begin at $22 million. If sold, the sale will represent the highest-priced residence ever to be sold at auction in the U.S.

Bird conceded the real estate market – even in Malibu, which is home to many celebrities and billionaires such as Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand, Sting, Microsoft (Stock Quote: MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen, DreamWorks Animation (Stock Quote: DWA) CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and Oracle (Stock Quote: ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison – is "sluggish," in an interview on CNBC.

The mansion at 21804 Pacific Coast Highway up for auction next week is not under foreclosure and is not considered a distressed property, but auctioning a home could prove the fastest way to make such a large sale.

"The seller is just motivated to sell because he wants it sold by a certain date and the property has been on the market for an extended amount of time," Tony Fitzgerald, a broker with Premiere Estates Auction, told Forbes.