Raquel Buys Into Bi-Coastal Living
Actress RAQUEL WELCH, who hasn’t owned a home on the West Coast for about 10 years, has purchased a one-story, contemporary in the Trousdale area of Beverly Hills for close to its $1.6-million asking price.
Welch quietly divorced her French photographer husband, Andre Weinfeld, in September after more than a year’s separation. The couple lived in New York, where she will continue to maintain a residence, sources say.
She bought in Beverly Hills, where she has periodically leased homes, because she has been spending more time in California since the release of her videotape, “Body and Mind,” which teaches stress relief techniques.
Her new home has four bedrooms and 5 1/2 baths in about 4,100 square feet. Built in 1960, it was recently renovated and has a new kitchen with bleached oak cabinets and a large master suite with high ceilings and skylights.
The house is on a quiet cul-de-sac and has a 40-foot-long swimming pool, a spa and a fountain.
Jim Rosskopf had the listing with his Hollywood Hills firm, and Brett Lawyer of Douglas Properties represented Welch. When contacted, neither Rosskopf nor Lawyer would discuss terms of the transaction.
A Santa Barbara ranch with an almost 200-year-old house--owned, at different times, by DANNY KAYE, ROBERT STACK, ROBERT MITCHUM and JOHN TRAVOLTA--has come on the market at $41,750,000.
Known as El Rancho Tajiguas, the 3,600-acre property also has what Dianne Johnson, one of the listing agents, terms “the oldest living lemon tree in California.” And the tree, whose exact age was not immediately available, still bears fruit, she said.
The ranch is planted with avocados, persimmons, oranges and a small variety of lemon, peach, plum, fig and cherimoya trees.
The 7,000-square-foot-plus hacienda, which was expanded once by architect George Washington Smith and later by the renowned Cliff May, has 20 rooms, including four bedrooms with sitting rooms; five baths, a staff wing and seven fireplaces. It also has a guest cottage, a caretaker’s house, corrals, a riding ring, tennis court and pool.
There are also 15 staff residences on the property, along with a horse barn, two hay barns, four equipment barns, an office building and 12 wells.
Johnson shares the listing with Renee Grubb and Roy A. Prinz, also of Douglas Properties.
EILEEN and NORMAN KREISS, of the Kreiss Collection furnishings, just sold their Beverly Hills pied-a-terre the first day it was listed and are now putting the finishing touches on a mansion that they have been building for themselves in Rancho Santa Fe.
Their Beverly Hills home only has two bedrooms in 2,600 square feet but was described by listing/selling agent Julianne Kyos as “the perfect couple house--a charming cottage that the Kreisses designed, with a waterfall and lagoon pool.”
The house, across the street from oilman/entrepreneur Marvin Davis’ estate and down a block from Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hills mansion, was sold to a laser surgeon for slightly less than its $850,000 asking price.
In the meantime, the Kreisses have been building a 12,000-square-foot-plus hacienda around a courtyard and a fountain on 3 1/2 acres in Rancho Santa Fe. The home has a master and four guest suites; a tennis court, pool and nine-hole golf course.
The Kreisses, who have about 30 showrooms worldwide, now have homes near their showrooms in La Jolla, Rancho Mirage and Palm Beach, Fla., but when they visit their main showroom on Melrose Avenue, they’ll “hotel it,” Kyos said.
Doron Langer, also at Stan Herman & Associates, co-listed the Kreisses’ Beverly Hills home.
Blues legend/songwriter WILLIE DIXON and his wife, MARIE, have bought a two-story, Tudor-style home in northwest Glendale.
They paid slightly more than $700,000 for the four-bedroom, two-bath house, where they already celebrated his 75th birthday with a party for 250 on the patio by the swimming pool.
The couple had been living in another Glendale house, which they shared with their extended family since moving there from Chicago in 1982.
Dixon is one of the few survivors of the Chicago-centered blues scene of the ‘50s and ‘60s and has been a professional musician for about 50 years.
“Willie has written for the Grateful Dead, Los Lobos and has 10 songs on the Muddy Waters’ album. Presently, he is working with Elton John’s songwriter, and his book, “I Am the Blues,” just hit the market in local bookstores,” said Marian Smart Getts of Prudential California Realty.
He was quoted in 1988 as saying, “I’m getting more attention than I ever got in my life.”
Getts represented the Dixons, along with Gloria Barnes of the same firm, in the home purchase.
KIM BASINGER’S Hollywood Hills house sold for $800,000, unfurnished, according to the escrow papers, “not nearly $1 million” as was reported in last week’s Hot Property column, said Peter Radd of James R. Gary & Co.
Radd also noted that he had the listing. Cheryl Crane of Alvarez, Hyland & Young represented the buyer. Incorrect information supplied to The Times indicated that Crane represented both sides in the deal, which took 45 days, not one day, to close escrow.
Basinger reportedly bought the house last May for nearly $1 million, including furnishings. She sold it to a man identified as an agent with Creative Artists Agency.
