Pro Takes a Shot at Life in Tiburon
Andre Agassi has purchased a home in the Marin County community of Tiburon for $23 million.
The tennis champion, who won the Australian Open last year, also has a home in Las Vegas, where he was born.
Agassi, 30, had looked at the Northern California property a few years ago, when he was married to actress Brooke Shields, but the tennis ace decided only last year to buy it. Escrow closed in late December. He and Shields were divorced in 1999. He and tennis star Steffi Graf are now a couple.
The Tiburon home is on a three-acre site. Agassi also bought several adjacent acres, which offer views of downtown San Francisco.
Built in 1996, the house has five bedrooms, six baths, a breakfast room, steam room, game room, home theater and a separate duplex for guests, all in about 10,000 square feet. The master suite has an adjoining library.
The grounds have two pools, an outdoor amphitheater, a waterfall, three spas, a private water supply, a four-car garage and, oh yes, a tennis court.
Agassi purchased the property from billionaire cell phone pioneer Craig McCaw, who paid about $7 million for the home when it was newly built.
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Speaking of McCaw, he bought the most expensive home in Northern California during 2000 with his purchase of an Atherton residence for $50 million.
That figure was topped in Southern California, however, when Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick bought developer David Murdock’s Bel-Air home in a complex deal that could be worth as much as $95 million.
Now that all of the escrows for 2000 have closed, a number of other top-dollar California residential sales also stand out. Among them:
* The nearly $38-million sale by businessman Essam Khashoggi, founder and chairman of EarthShell Corp., of a 38-acre home in Santa Barbara.
* The $18-million Beverly Hills home sale of the late comedian Danny Thomas.
* The $17-million Malibu home purchase by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape.
* The nearly $16.5-million sale of a Bel-Air home built on spec by David Murdock Jr., son of developer David Murdock, who is also chief executive of Castle & Cook.
* The $15-million Brentwood home purchase by actress Michelle Pfeiffer and writer-producer-director David E. Kelley.
* The nearly $14.9-million sale of a Newport Beach home once owned by the Irvine family. The seller was Don Byerly, founder and chairman of the upscale Minnesota supermarket chain Byerly’s.
* The $12.5-million Holmby Hills home purchase by Thomas O’Gara, formerly of Kroll-O’Gara Co. of Ohio, and his wife Victoria, a former model and the widow of the late tycoon Lord Gordon White of Hull, a co-founder of Hanson Industries.
* The nearly $10-million Malibu home sale by actor Richard Gere.
* The nearly $10-million Malibu land purchase by actor Nicolas Cage.
High-end home sales on the Westside were up during the year 2000, especially for homes that sold for more than $10 million each, according to Coldwell Banker broker Cecelia Waeschle, who has tracked pricey residential transactions since 1987.
Last year, 21 homes sold at more than $10 million apiece. The previous year, only seven homes sold for that amount.
A total of 345 homes sold last year for more than $2.5 million each, and of those, 81 sold for more than $5 million apiece. In 1999, 301 homes were sold at more than $2.5 million each, and of those, 59 sold at more than $5 million apiece.
“Times were good last year in Southern California, but we didn’t even come close to Northern California, which more than doubled its share of the $2.5-million-plus market,” said Waeschle, an estates director with Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills.
“It wasn’t uncommon last year to hear about houses selling for $20 million in the Tiburon and Belvedere areas,” she said, “and most of the buyers who paid the double-digit numbers were dot-commers and were under 39.”
One of the first big sales of the New Year in the Southland was a lot just under an acre in Bel-Air for about $5 million.
The same property sold 10 years ago for slightly under thatprice. Later, it was sold for about $2 million.
There is a 1960s-era, one-story ranch-style house on the lot, which is expected to be demolished.
Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates, Beverly Hills, had the listing.
The home of the late Contessa Cohn, the Beverly Hills socialite and party hostess, is on the market at just under $6.5 million.
Cohn, in her 90s when she died last July, frequently entertained dinner guests over the years, mostly in restaurants but occasionally in her house, which she shared with her husband, residential developer Daniel Cohn, and their three children. Daniel Cohn died in 1982.
The traditional-style house has three bedrooms in 4,600 square feet. It is on about 2.4 acres with city-to-ocean views, a tennis court, a pool with cabanas and a one-bedroom guest house. The main house is in need of a total renovation.
The Cohns had owned their home since 1968. It was built in 1949 for Harvey S. Mudd, the civic leader and mining engineer who was chairman of the Board of Fellows of Claremont College and a trustee of Caltech when he died in 1955.
Johanna Falduto of Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
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INSIDE
The home of the late Contessa Cohn.
