‘Days of Thunder,’ Nights in Palisades
TOM CRUISE bought a home in Pacific Palisades just before he left for Australia last month on a vacation to meet the parents of his girlfriend and “Days of Thunder” co-star NICOLE KIDMAN.
Cruise purchased a secluded, Colonial-style home with electric gates up a long, tree-lined driveway. He paid about $4.7 million, according to sources not involved in the deal. Title was taken in the name of a trust.
Built in the early ‘40s, the two-story house was recently refurbished. It has five bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths and four fireplaces in slightly more than 6,200 square feet.
The home also has a dramatic, spiral staircase; wood-paneled library, two-story guest house, motor court, swimming pool, spa, cabana and English garden.
The property had been co-listed by Joan McGoohan, Jon Douglas Co., and Micheline Swift and Lisa Duffy, Fred Sands Estates. McGoohan said that she could not divulge any details about the transaction, and the other realtors were unavailable for comment.
ZSA ZSA GABOR and her husband, PRINCE FREDERICK VON ANHALT, have put the Ventura County horse ranch that they bought in February on the market, and she has re-listed her Bel-Air mansion at $15 million.
They’re asking $3.95 million for the 20-acre ranch, which Gabor named Silver Fox Farm for her favorite horse. The ranch has a 48-stall barn, corrals, a six-horse electric walker, lighted show ring, an eight-unit apartment building and a ranch house. Gabor bought it for $1.75 million.
She also re-listed the Bel-Air house that she’s had on and off the market with a couple of realty firms since 1988, starting at $6.95 million. A month after she first listed it, she raised it to $10 million, and less than six months later, she upped it again to $15 million.
The French Regency, said to have once been a residence of Elvis Presley and--at another time--of Howard Hughes, is on an acre and has gardens, a swimming pool, city views, two master suites, a ballroom and a room from the set of the 1952 film “Moulin Rouge,” in which Gabor and Jose Ferrer starred.
Both properties are listed with Ruth Hoffman at Mike Silverman & Associates.
Just in time for school, a Japanese family had found a house in Palos Verdes to buy for their daughter, bound for Santa Monica City College.
It wasn’t typical of student housing.
It is a six-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath oceanfront estate with 7,500 square feet of interior space, including a gym, sauna and maid’s quarters. It also has gardens, koi ponds, orchid greenhouses, aviaries, a swimming pool, spa and sun deck. Asking price: $5.1 million.
The parents put the house in escrow, and then decided that her commute to classes would be too far.
“Just like that, 2 1/2 weeks later, I got a call from their broker, saying, ‘Please give the deposit to the sellers and don’t consummate the deal,” said listing broker Larry Arman of RE/MAX Rolling Hills Realty. The deposit amounted to $135,000.
As for the sellers, Arman said:
“It’s a funny thing, but in today’s marketplace, they would have preferred selling the house (to collecting the deposit), but I tell other people about it, and they say, ‘Get me the same deal.”’
A Chatsworth home described by its listing agent as a former retreat for LUCILLE BALL and DESI ARNAZ has come on the market.
“RKO built it for them in 1950,” said Bobbie Epstein, who has the $898,000 listing with Coldwell Banker, West Sherman Oaks. A few years later, the famous couple bought the studio and the house, she added.
The 5,000-square-foot house, which was recently refurbished, has two main bedrooms, two maid’s or sitting rooms and a living/family room area large enough to accommodate a couple of hundred people, she said. The house sits on three-fourths of an acre.
Steve Zipp, an international retailer of computer and electronics parts, has owned the house for about eight years. “He’s moving to Santa Barbara,” Epstein said.
JULES BERMAN, the Beverly Hills man who brought Kahlua to America and helped develop Huntington Harbour and Lake Arrowhead, has sold a 10,000-acre ranch in the northeast corner of California for $2.75 million, according to Richard L. (Dick) Burns, of Rolling Hills Estates, who handled the transaction.
“Jules bought the ranch in the early ‘70s with his partner, Bob Prescott, for raising game birds; hunting and fishing,” Burns said. “They had plans to develop it, but then Mr. Prescott died.”
Prescott headed a group of investors who founded Flying Tiger air-freight line, which was purchased by Federal Express in 1988. When the ranch was sold, Federal Express had an interest in it.
Burns described buyers of the ranch as “San Francisco business people and investors from Japan, who plan to develop the property into some sort of recreational activity.”
