Hot Property: Michael Jackson to Be Home on the Range
Michael Jackson is on a 13-city concert tour, but when he comes home, it probably won’t be just to Encino anymore.
He is buying a 2,700-acre ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley for about $28 million and a small hotel nearby, for his entourage, for $5 million, say several real estate sources.
The pop star was looking at Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara but needed a more rural environment for his menagerie. At last count, he had monkeys, llamas, snakes, birds and just about every kind of farmyard animal except a cow at his 1-acre Encino compound, where he and his family have lived since the ‘60s.
They will have plenty of room to stretch on the remote Sycamore Valley Ranch, which is being sold by William Bone, developer of the PGA West resort in Palm Springs and scores of condos in the desert.
Bone bought the place, then known as the Zaca Laderas Ranch, in 1977 from banker Robert Easton. Bone developed a large clubhouse at Sycamore Valley Ranch and apparently had plans to turn the property into a country club but changed his mind. The ranch has been on the market for at least a year.
Besides the clubhouse, the property has a huge house on a 32-acre home site and 50,000 oak trees.
Bone was asking $32 million, and turned down Jackson’s original offer of $17 million. Escrow hasn’t closed yet on the $28-million sale.
There is no news yet on whether Jackson will sell his Encino home, which he expanded in 1982. He moved the original 1,570-square-foot house to the rear of the site then for use as a recording studio and built an 11,500-square-foot house in front along with a four-car garage with 850 square feet of living space overhead.
