Newsletter: Hot Property: Birds of a feather
Hollywood stars and celebrities seem to flock to certain Los Angeles area neighborhoods. On the flight path are such perches as the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills and Los Feliz. Malibu, of course, has long been popular as the second home nesting site.
This week, however, we also find notable takeoffs and landings happening in ’hoods including Sherman Oaks and L.A.’s Windsor Square. Here’s our bird’s-eye view.
– Neal J. Leitereg and Lauren Beale
Wrapping up old business
The Sherman Oaks home that actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson bought for Russian songwriter and pianist Oksana Grigorieva is listed at $2.575 million.
The Academy Award-winning actor, who has a child with Grigorieva, bought the house about the time the couple split seven years ago for close to $2.4 million.
The home is a modern spin on the Prairie School style. Built in 2006, the roughly 3,500-square-foot house features decorative and stained-glass windows, skylights, mahogany built-ins and stone accents.
Gibson’s real estate investments have included properties in Malibu, Connecticut, Australia, Fiji and Costa Rica.
Gibson listed the home in Sherman Oaks for sale at $2.575 million. (Realtor.com | Inset: Los Angeles Times)
A fashionable address
Talk about dressing for success. Clothing retailer and designer James Perse has sold a Malibu home that he furnished and redesigned for the asking price of $12.995 million.
Sitting on roughly 2 acres in the Point Dume area, the European-farmhouse-style home has a traditional look with gables, sets of dormer windows and a sloping roofline.
The two-story home’s 7,400 square feet of white-walled interiors are dressed in light hardwood floors, surfboard accent pieces and furniture from Perse’s home collection.
Perse sold the home in Malibu for the asking price of $12.995 million. (Nikolas Koenig | Los Angeles Times)
Sold on the sly
We couldn’t have picked a better house for an actor who stars in a cloak-and-dagger espionage series. But James Spader, of the NBC thriller “The Blacklist,” has now sold his home in Windsor Square for $4 million, property records show.
Built in 1922, the Mediterranean Revival-style house is accented by a red-tile roof, sets of long picture windows and an arched front door flanked by tall palms. That is to say, this place has a lot of character.
Renovated and restored, the roughly 3,700 square feet of interiors include a restaurant-grade kitchen with soapstone countertops, a mahogany-paneled library, a media room, four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. There’s a separate guest studio with a bedroom and bathroom.
Spader sold his home in historic Windsor Square for $4 million in a deal finalized before processing. (Realtor.com | Los Angeles Times)
News from the valley floor
Santa Rosa Valley, a rural community tucked in between Thousand Oaks and Camarillo, has seen a pair of deals in recent weeks.
Eric Gardner, the founder of Panacea Entertainment and producer of the “Elvira” films and TV shows, is ready to pack up and move. The executive is asking $2.499 million for his country manor-style home on more than 2 acres.
The 8,161-square-foot house includes, among other things, an oversized chef’s kitchen, a media room and a dining room with a snazzy custom aquarium. A swimming pool and spa, a koi pond and an outdoor pavilion fill the manicured grounds.
Gardner bought the Santa Rosa estate nearly two decades ago for $1.122 million. (Ghost Group LA)
Near the Gardner property is a plot of land that rock star Lindsey Buckingham recently snapped up for $1.5 million. The 10-acre property of mostly flat land gives the former Fleetwood Mac frontman plenty of room to build his next estate.
Designs on his style
For modernist buffs, there’s no better eye-candy than the 1960s home that Joe’s Jeans founder Joe Dahan recently sold.
The Hal Levitt-designed residence is distinguished by such midcentury modern staples as floor-to-ceiling glass, custom built-ins and white terrazzo floors. An open floor plan includes living, dining and family rooms, five bedrooms and five bathrooms, most of which open directly to the outdoors.
One might say Dahan, who founded the luxury denim brand in 2001, made a fashionable exit. He sold the property for $6.1 million — about $1.5 million more than he paid for it a decade ago.
Dahan sold his Hal Levitt-designed home in Hollywood Hills West for $6.1 million. (Lee Manning)
Angels in the O.C.
Retired baseball star Garret Anderson hit nearly 300 home runs over the course of his big league career, but these days he’ll settle for a home sale. The former Angels star is asking $10.995 million for his custom estate in Irvine’s Shady Canyon.
The Spanish-style home, built in 2009, circles the bases when it comes to amenities. There’s a chef’s kitchen with a La Cornue range, a wood-paneled library, a game room, a theater and a gym. Six bedrooms and 10 bathrooms lie within 9,500 square feet of interiors.
Outdoors, there’s a swimming pool and a pavilion for entertaining. Succulent gardens, loggias and lawns fill out the major-league setting.
Anderson put his home in the Shady Canyon area of Irvine on the market for $10.995 million. (Realtor.com | Los Angeles Times)
From the back issues
Twenty years ago this week, professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and his then-wife, Linda, looked to pin down a buyer for their Chatsworth home. The couple put the equestrian property on about 4 acres on the market for $1.5 million.
More recently, it’s Linda Hogan who has been making real estate news. She’s been shopping her sprawling estate in Simi Valley for more than $5 million since last year.
Priscilla Presley, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi of Japan will forever be linked thanks to a Hot Property column that ran 10 years ago this week.
Presley, the ex-wife of Elvis Presley, was in escrow to sell her home in Lake Arrowhead when she had to cancel her plans and fly to Graceland to meet President Bush and the prime minister, who was apparently a huge Elvis fan. She later returned to finish the paperwork on her house and it sold for about the $2.5 million asking price.
What we’re reading
— The legal battle that has stopped Los Angeles from permitting new granny flats has thrown hundreds of units already tucked behind local homes into limbo. Homeowner John Gregorchuk, however, is among those mired mid-process, reports The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes. He forked over money for city fees and got his plans vetted. But when he went to pull his building permit, the city refused.
— Business columnist Liz Weston discusses the pitfalls of using your home as collateral. Many homeowners who tapped their equity before the financial crisis are discovering that interest-only periods don’t last forever. After the initial “draw” period, monthly payments can jump 50% or more. For those who are stuck, a cash-out refinance that combines the equity loan and the mortgage may be the way to go. More drastic measures include a short sale or negotiating a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure with the lender.
For more luxury real estate, visit us at the Hot Property blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
