Ranch Neighboring the Reagans’ Sold
The 1,400-acre Rancho Dos Vistas, adjoining President Reagan’s Santa Barbara ranch and overlooking actor John Travolta’s home, was auctioned off Oct. 12, all right, but there was a big foul-up:
“At the last minute, they decided to sell it at a per-acre price, and that caused some confusion,” Kerry Mormann, an independent Santa Barbara real estate broker, recalled last week. Bidders quickly multiplied per-acre prices by the number of acres in the ranch, but the winner miscalculated.
A per-acre bid that would have amounted to about $3.1 million for the whole ranch was accepted. “But I could tell that there was a problem,” Mormann said, “so I stuck around.”
And sure enough: “After an hour or so, there was a short statement that the winning bidder thought he was getting the ranch for considerably less.” He was released from his offer. Then Mormann negotiated with representatives of the seller, local businessman Arthur Williams, who had sold his Harbor Restaurant, on the Santa Barbara municipal pier, at auction earlier in the day.
“The auctioneer said he couldn’t re-auction the ranch because everybody left,” Mormann explained. It was a costly venture since the auction was held at the posh Biltmore Hotel. And the seller wanted to sell right away.
So Mormann made an offer that was not refused--about $2.5 million--for his client, Rudolf Schulte, who might be called the “ranch baron” of Santa Barbara. (He also owns the 3,000-acre, ocean-front Dos Pueblos Ranch and the 1,080-acre Baron Ranch, which he has listed with Mormann at $10 million.) Mormann, a ranch specialist, has had such celebrity clients as Fess Parker, Andy Granatelli and James Arness.
“We heard there was a bidder representing President Reagan at the auction,” he went on, “but we don’t know that for sure.”
The Reagans’ 688-acre Rancho del Cielo shares the same gate with Rancho Dos Vistas, which Mormann described as “really more private though similar to the adjoining property. It’s heavily wooded with an adobe house and a spectacular ocean view.” Both ranches are in the Santa Ynez Mountains, 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Singer Peggy Lee has put her Bel-Air home on the market because she wants to build a house with a recording studio, either in Los Angeles or Orange County, says Brooks Barton, western regional director of Previews Inc., Santa Barbara.
Michael Mason, Previews marketing director, has the $3.95-million listing. The French Regency-style villa has a circular staircase, music salon and drawing room with a marble fireplace.
And if you’re wondering, as the title of one of Lee’s hits goes, “Is That All There Is?” . . . her house also has French doors leading to an outdoor pool, a banquet-size dining room, and what Barton described as “great views of the city.” The house is 25 years old, and Lee has owned it for the past eight.
Actress Rhonda Fleming and her movie-theater magnate husband, Ted Mann, have leased a 4-bedroom house worth about $2 million in the gate-guarded Irvine Cove community in Laguna Beach, and they plan to move in Nov. 1.
Their new home, with a pool, is on one level. They sold a condo in Century City several months ago, which had a private elevator. They still own two condos, which they use themselves, in the luxurious Century City development known as Century Woods. Melinda Hugill and Pat Zartler of Merrill Lynch, Newport Beach, handled the lease.
Remember the fund-raiser held earlier this month by Cecelia Waeschle, a broker with Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills, and her husband, airline pilot Clifford Waeschle, for St. Joseph’s Center for the Homeless in Venice? The dinner, at the Beverly Hills home of Rodeo co-founder Joyce Rey, netted $11,000 for the center’s food program, Waeschle reports.
And at another fund-raiser: A 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, donated by real estate developer Richard C. Browne of Carlton Browne & Co., was auctioned for $26,000 at the 14th annual Long Beach Cancer League auction, which raised about $500,000.
The Los Feliz Improvement Assn. planned a snazzy home tour Saturday: Thirty people paid $65 each to see such houses as one designed in the ‘20s by the famous late architect R.M. Schindler and owned now by producer/actor George Carey. (It’s for sale, for the second time in its history, through Mark Schaye at Douglas Properties’ Los Feliz office. Price: $1,495,000.)
Also on the tour: an Italian villa once occupied by actress Norma Talmadge and a 13,000-square-foot Craftsman-style residence. Proceeds will be used for the association’s historical survey.
