- Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen rented a sleek property in Venice Beach overlooking the Grand Canal in 2021
- Their stay turned out to be a headache for then-owner Jonathan Neman, co-founder and CEO of Sweetgreen, who decided to sell the home last year at a major loss
Hunter Biden, 53, left his multimillion-dollar Venice Beach, California, rental home in a state of ‘disarray and disrepair’ and owing approximately $80,000 in outstanding rent.
The scandal-mired First Son rented the sprawling property on the edge of the Grand Canal two years ago and moved in with his then ten-month old son, Beau, and second wife, Melissa, 37, in February 2021.
According to one DailyMail source, ‘Hunter and Melissa were horrible tenants. Not only did they stiff the owner for months of rent, they left the house in terrible condition.’
At the time, the imposing three-story property was owned by Sweetgreen CEO and co-founder Jonathan Neman.
The source added, ‘They were totally disrespectful of Jonathan and [his wife] Leora’s property.’Melissa was rude and entitled. They destroyed the stereo equipment in the home and when someone came to fix it, they were uncooperative. They also left the place dirty.’
Property records show that Neman sold the home, which rented out for $25,000 a month, last March for $3.9million. It is now valued at $4.2million.
But according to one well-placed source the former owner could only shift the property after cleaning up the Bidens’ mess and was left out of pocket when Hunter, 53, shorted him more than three months’ rent.
Neman, who founded the hip farm-to-table salad chain along with Nicolas Jammet and Nathaniel Ru in 2007, declined to comment on the president’s son’s tenancy when approached by DailyMail.com this week.
But the source said, ‘Neman decided not to take Hunter to court for the arrears. It’s not that he needed the money and frankly it was embarrassing.’
The 3,735 square foot home perched on the edge of Grand Canal has been repainted by its new owners and the Secret Service details whose blacked out SUVs became a familiar feature in the small community are long gone.
Hunter and Melissa only lived in Neman’s Venice home for about six months. They then moved to Malibu.
As well as his son with Melissa, father-of-five Hunter, shares three daughters with his first wife, Kathleen, and 4-year-old daughter, Navy, with Lunden Roberts – a girl that the president only publicly recognized as his grandchild at the weekend.
Hunter remains constantly in the news. On Monday, his former business partner Devon Archer told Congress that the ‘Biden brand’ helped keep Ukrainian firm Burisma from going bankrupt.
In his hotly anticipated bombshell testimony, Archer claimed that President Joe Biden was on the phone or present in-person at least 20 times while his son, who called him ‘my guy’, was talking with foreign associates.
