‘Funniest’ Host Is a Serious Buyer
BOB SAGET, host of ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and star of the ABC sitcom “Full House,” and his wife, SHERRI KRAMER SAGET, have purchased a newly built house in Pacific Palisades.
On “Full House,” Bob Saget plays a single parent of three young daughters; in real life, he and his wife have two. His wife was a practicing attorney, specializing in probate and estate planning, before the children were born.
Their new home--a two-story Mediterranean--had been listed at $2,995,000. Sources indicated that the Sagets paid between $2.4 million and $2.6 million, but a spokesman for Saget denied it. Public records show that the Sagets have a $1.8 million first-trust deed on the property, but there was no information on how large a down payment, if any, was made.
The house has four bedrooms and 5 1/2 baths plus maid’s quarters in 6,500 square feet, an industry source said. There is a 30-foot-high, tiled-floor entry and a library with cherry wood paneling.
The master suite has a sitting area with a fireplace; a private balcony, exercise room, two walk-in closets and a bath with a spa, steam shower and sauna. There is a bonus room adjacent to the master suite that can be used as an additional bedroom, an office or a den.
Situated on a private street, the home also has a large patio; tiled walkways; a swimming pool and an outdoor spa.
The house that actor DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS and actress MARY PICKFORD had built for the manager of their 3,000-acre ranch in San Diego County has come on the market at $1.35 million.
It was built in 1928 by architect Wallace Neff, who also turned a Beverly Hills hunting lodge into Pickfair, the couple’s famous home.
Now that most of Pickfair has been razed, the ranch house is being described by its owners as “the only remaining house in Southern California tied directly” to the late stars when they were married. The home was also the only one on the ranch until the posh Fairbanks Ranch residential community was developed there in the early 1980s.
The early-Spanish California-style house has four bedrooms and two baths in 2,300 square feet, and it sits on 1.5 acres, surrounded by parkland and adjacent to a stream.
Its current owners, Bill and Mary Culver, bought it about five years ago from Nixon White House aide H.R. (BOB) HALDEMAN and his wife, Jo, who had planned to retire there but went instead to Santa Barbara, according to the Culvers.
“We had the house sandblasted and re-stuccoed. Then we refinished all the doors and windows,” Bill Culver said. They also restored the center courtyard and disassembled, refinished and re-installed the old door locks and hardware from the pre-Pickfair hunting lodge, circa 1900.
“We hope somebody will buy and love this place as we do and not tear it down to put up a typical, large Fairbanks Ranch house,” said Mary Culver.
The Culvers, who listed their home with their own Rancho Santa Fe realty firm, are planning to become organic herb farmers in another state.
AARON and CANDY SPELLING’S 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills mansion is expected to be completed by the end of this month, sources say.
“Then, after they get their drapes and furniture in, they should be in the house, probably within the next two to three months,” one of the sources said. All the furniture is in storage, waiting for the notice of completion, he said.
The mega mansion has taken four years to build, on the five-acre site of the former BING CROSBY home, a nearly 15,000-square-footer that the Spellings bought for $10.25 million in 1983, then had it demolished.
The house that Spelling is building is said to out-dynasty “Dynasty,” which--along with “The Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island,” “Hotel” and other TV series that he produced--made him one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood.
However, despite what a neighbor once called “Look-at-me-I’m-rich” architecture and furnishings imported from Europe, industry sources have observed some cost cutting in the final weeks of its construction.
“The tennis court and pool are really ordinary, and there isn’t even a pavilion,” one said.
“There was a budget for landscaping, and they cut it in half; there is a reflecting pool, but they cut out the fountain in the courtyard; the landscaping is mediocre, filler trees but no great specimens,” another complained.
Complaints about the house are nothing new to the Spellings, who incurred their neighbors’ wrath over its size as soon as the steel frame went up.
“I think the Spellings themselves were getting tired of the project, because it’s taken so long, and that’s probably why they decided to reduce their spending and just finish it,” a source said.
