GTA Online Mansions Guide: Prices, Upgrades, Pets and Michael's Mission

For over a decade, GTA Online players have asked the same question: why can't we buy the mansions? The A Safehouse in the Hills update finally answered it. Mansions are the game's new endgame property — part garage, part operations hub, part flex — and they gate some of the update's best content, including a full heist and a story-mode face nobody expected to see again. Here is the complete guide to buying, upgrading and actually using one.

The Three Mansions: Prices and Locations

To buy, pull out your phone, open the Internet, and head to the Prix Luxury Real Estate site — the same flow as other high-end property in GTA Online. All three mansions share the same core features and upgrade tree, so your choice is really about location and taste: Tongva is secluded, Vinewood is central, Richman is pure old-money Los Santos.

Inside: Upgrades, Garage and the AI Assistant

Every mansion offers interior styling options, additional rooms and security upgrades, and each one includes a 20-space garage — instantly one of the largest single car stores in the game. The grounds are gated, which makes your mansion a genuinely safe place to idle in free roam while other players wage war outside.

The standout upgrade is the AI Assistant, a concierge system that helps run your empire from home and manages your other properties on your behalf. It is a quality-of-life feature aimed squarely at veteran players juggling businesses across the map: the mansion is designed to be the desk you run Los Santos from, not just a pretty interior.

The Art Studio: Your Key to the Kortz Center Heist

One upgrade matters more than the rest. Adding the Art Studio ($4,700,000, or $3,700,000 once you have completed the Fine Art Collector Program) turns your mansion into the planning base for the Kortz Center Heist, the update's headline score against the museum's art collection. If you are buying a mansion primarily to make money, budget for the studio at the same time — the heist's payouts are how the property earns its keep.

Yes, You Can Finally Get a Pet

Mansions introduced GTA Online's first pets. Interact with the cat bed on the living-room table to buy a cat, or the doghouse in the backyard to buy a dog — each costs $15,000, and you get to name your animal. Cats come in five colours (white, calico, ginger, grey and black), while dogs offer seven breeds: Husky, Poodle, Pug, Retriever, Rottweiler, Shepherd and Westy, most with several colour options. Your pet roams the mansion freely, and yes, you can pet them — walk up and press right on the D-pad. It serves no gameplay purpose whatsoever, which is exactly the point.

Michael's Mission: Home Sweet Home

Owning a mansion also unlocks the update's story treat: Michael De Santa's first-ever appearance in GTA Online. To trigger it, you first need to complete five tasks for Avi Schwartzman. Watch for a text from an unknown sender; after it arrives, Avi's jobs appear as 'A' icons at payphones around Los Santos, and involve sabotaging KnoWay property before a mini-heist finale. These calls can take a while to arrive — waits of 15 to 45 minutes are normal, so keep playing free roam rather than staring at your phone.

Finish all five, then wait outside your mansion in free roam. Within roughly 15 minutes you should receive the invite to 'Home Sweet Home', which transitions into a cutscene with Michael himself. It is the only Michael mission in the update for now, and it is worth the payphone grind purely for the novelty of seeing him in Online at last.