Burt and Loni Move Back to L.A.
Actor BURT REYNOLDS, who has been living mainly on his Florida ranch since selling his bachelor pad in Holmby Hills last summer, has leased a newly built home in the Bel-Air area for a year at $40,000 a month.
“He took the lease because he has a new series that is about to begin filming right away,” said Bobbi Ward of Asher Dann & Associates, who represented Reynolds in the lease but wouldn’t divulge its value, which came from other sources.
Reynolds is the star and co-executive producer of the new fall CBS series “Evening Shade,” about an ex-football pro who returns to his hometown to raise a family.
“Burt leased the house without (his wife, actress) LONI (ANDERSON) knowing, but when she saw it, she loved it,” Ward said. They entered a lease option for an additional year.
Anderson was in Italy during July for a TV remake of “Three Coins in a Fountain,” and she will be one of a handful of hosts for “Who’s Minding the Kids?,” a week of educational, back-to-school TV programs starting Aug. 27 on the A&E; cable network.
“Burt rented it (the house) completely furnished,” Ward said, “but he put his own artwork in it. He has an extensive collection of fine art, but he also has a lot of Western art.”
The home, which she described as a gated, two-acre compound with many security features, has a San Fernando Valley view, swimming pool and tennis court.
He’s putting Astroturf on the tennis court, so his son Quinton, 23 months, can use it as a playground, and he’s baby-proofing the pool, Ward said.
The 15,000-square-foot main house has eight bedrooms and 11 baths, including a guest/staff apartment with a kitchen and a living room. There is also a guest house. “You have to drive to that,” she said.
The home also has a master suite with what Ward termed “his and hers TV sets” and “incredible closet space.” “Loni has a black belt in shopping, according to Burt,” Ward said with a chuckle.
The home was built by its owner, Jay Steinbeck, who recently constructed 15 $1-million-plus houses in the master-planned Brentwood community of MountainGate. Steinbeck was represented in the lease by Linda May of Mosler, May, Deasy & Doe.
Model/actress/recording star ROSEANNE VELA has purchased a home off Beverly Glen near Mulholland Drive in an area where Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Marlon Brando live.
Vela co-stars with Nicholson in “The Two Jakes,” which opens this Friday. She has appeared on the cover of Vogue 14 times and has recorded an album with A & M Records, which is due out in early 1991.
She bought a white contemporary villa with French doors and a swimming pool for $750,000.
She was represented by Kurt Rappaport and Chris Furie of Prudential Rodeo Realty. Martin Genis of Douglas Properties represented the seller.
The Taj Mahal is on the market, but it’s not the one in Agra, India. It’s the one in the San Francisco Bay. It’s a houseboat that looks like a floating Taj, and is the weekend home of Deborah and William Harlan.
Docked in the Sausalito Yacht Harbor at a cost of $2,500 a month, the 200-ton-plus houseboat is a combination of Mogul and Moorish architecture, with its white, slender towers, graceful arches and onion-shaped domes.
The 4,500-square-foot houseboat has two domes, instead of one like the Indian landmark, but the cut-out fascia above its entrance was copied from a portal of the original Taj. The long boardwalk leading to the houseboat even resembles the lengthy approach to the famous mausoleum.
The houseboat also has such features as a sauna, whirlpool tub, wine cellar, four fireplaces, two kitchens, three bedrooms, four baths and an elevator to service three levels of living.
“But its back yard is the bay, and that’s why the Harlans are selling it; they have two little babies, and that doesn’t work on a houseboat,” said Mary Lou Castellanos.
She shares the $2.5-million listing with Debi DeCello at Pacific Union Co., a San Francisco residential brokerage firm that William Harlan co-founded. He is also co-owner of the Merryvale Vineyard in the Napa Valley.
The Bel-Air mansion that the SULTAN OF BRUNEI decided not to buy in February because of the radon discovered there has been purchased by a member of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, sources not involved in the deal said last week.
The home has 25 bedrooms in 36,000 square feet, including a guest house, chauffeur’s and housekeeper’s quarters, and a number of bedrooms under the tennis court, a realtor noted.
The property had quietly been marketed at $25 million and was sold to a Saudi prince, just before the current Middle East crisis for slightly more than the sultan was going to pay for it, the sources said. The sultan had the house in escrow for eight months at $18.5 million before radon was discovered there.
“The radon problem was really minor, so I’m sure it was taken care of,” said a home inspector familiar with the house.
The house was built five years ago on a four-acre site purchased from former media magnate WALTER H. ANNENBERG for $2.9 million, the realtor said.
Before he bought the Bel-Air house, the Saudi prince had been negotiating to buy Merv Griffin’s 157 acres in the Santa Monica Mountains, he added. That property is listed at $20 million with Steve Lewis of Jon Douglas Co.’s Beverly Hills office, but he would not comment.
