Streisand’s Among High-End Homes
Inventory is so low, even millionaires are having a tough time finding housing, but there are several homes for sale in the Southland at $20 million or more.
That makes Barbra Streisand’s four-house, 25-acre Malibu compound, which has come on the market--we hear--for $18 million, a bargain. Right? It was on HBO last fall when Streisand sang there, raising $1.5 million for Democratic candidates.
Remember when the most expensive home in the Los Angeles area was the late hotelier Conrad Hilton’s mansion in Bel-Air, which sold for $12 million in 1980?
With two homes in the area now listed at $20 million and one for $25 million, the Hilton sale seems small by comparison. Since then, though, there was a sale, in Beverly Hills, at $20.5 million, and a listing, in Bel-Air, at $27 million, which went for $13.5 million. What a drop!
What is believed to be the most expensive home for sale in the country now--at $25 million--is the Beverly Hills mansion owned for years by actress Marion Davies.
Its current owner is building a 7,000-square-foot addition. That’s bigger than two average-size houses. The addition will have two guest suites and a “smashing media room,” said Jeff Hyland of Alvarez, Hyland & Young, the listing broker.
Next in price, in the Southland anyway, are the two houses at $20 million each. One, in Brentwood, is owned by architect Cliff May and his wife. The other, in Bel-Air, is owned by designer Budd Holden. The Mays’ was reduced from $22 million.
Still too high? John Kilroy, who built many office towers near International Airport,wants $15 million for his mansion in Bel-Air.
At the other end of the spectrum . . . you can still buy a place to live on the expensive Westside for only $19,000 at $159 a month. It’s in a mobile-home park in Santa Monica.
Fourteen realtors have joined Sherry Sexton, president of Beverly Hills-based Celebrity Properties, in her campaign, through July, to fight cancer.
Sexton’s idea: “Anyone who lists a property with one of the participating brokers during June and July and mentions ‘Realtors Fight Cancer’ Month will have a 10% referral fee of the listing commission donated in the seller’s name to the John Wayne Cancer Clinic at UCLA when the property is sold.”
Other brokers are invited to participate.
It’s being called the “world’s largest cinema complex.” It’s the Cineplex Odeon Universal City Cinemas, which will officially open with a ceremony at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. And how large is largest? It has 18 screens, 6,000 seats, 120,000 square feet on two levels, and an entrance 70 feet wide and 45 feet high.
No more dingy rooms, they say, for Los Angeles actors working at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre--The Shilley Family Trust bought a 22-unit apartment house in San Diego’s Hillcrest district for about $1 million and will lease the building to the theater for visiting actors on an annual basis.
George Carlson of John Burnham & Co. represented the buyer, and Kenneth Shuttleworth of Western Commercial Investments represented the seller, Melko Investment Co. Inc. of Beverly Hills.
Despite his preference for privacy, Ted Field is in the news again.
The latest about the TV producer, who is also an heir of Chicago department-store magnate Marshall Field, is that he sold a 2 1/2-acre estate he owned in Holmby Hills to Mario Kassar, founder of Carolco Pictures, in a deal that involved two trade-ins, said Paris Moskopoulos of Paris Realty, who represented Field. Denise Richard of Beverly Realty represented Kassar.
“Mario traded a home in Beverly Hills, one in New York and some cash in the total transaction, which came to about $9 million,” Moskopoulos said. The Beverly Hills house, an English manor-style home of stone with a tile roof, is now for sale at $2.1 million.
The house Field sold was once owned by former TV gossip columnist Rona Barrett (she’s now producing TV movies), and Field owned it for five years, adding a professional theater that can seat 50 people.
Situated near the Playboy Mansion on what Moskopoulos described as “one of the best streets in Holmby,” the home also has a tennis court and a security system that cost more than $500,000.
“Not even a bird can sit on the fence,” Moskopoulos remarked.
Langan’s Brasserie, the famous London restaurant that is planning to open a place in Century City, is owned by Peter Langan (along with Michael Caine and some other celebrity backers), not David Hockney, as we reported last week. Hockney, a California artist, is designing the menus.
Ragnar Qvale, who--with his brother--owns the Design Center in downtown Los Angeles, and Ragnar’s wife, Mollie, hosted a dinner party a few days ago for about 18 people--including several representatives of the Community Redevelopment Agency, and there was much talk about the revival of Spring Street.
Watch for some BIG events starting in August, they say, with the opening then of a nightclub in the old Stock Exchange Building and some festivities in September that will be part of the L. A. Festival.
