Stand-up adds a new home, baby to routine
David Letterman once produced a TV special starring comedian Carol Leifer that was called “Carol Doesn’t Leifer Anymore.” And now it’s true. Leifer has moved out of her house in the Hollywood Hills.
The “Seinfeld” writer turned Nick at Nite executive producer and her partner, Lori Wolf, have relocated to a larger home in the Santa Monica Mountains that they purchased for close to $3.2 million.
The couple bought a 5,000-square-foot, traditional-style home with five bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms and slightly more than half an acre of park-like grounds with mountain, city and treetop views.
They wanted more space because they are adopting a baby boy. “But I love the other house so much, we kept it,” Leifer said.
She and Wolf, who works in commercial real estate, rented out their former home, which is a 2,600-square-foot contemporary with three bedrooms, a den, a media room, a maid’s room, a pool and city-to-mountain views. Leifer bought the home in 1998 for $900,000.
It has been just over a year since Leifer also bought what she has described as “a little jewel” of a house with 2,100 square feet -- and dubbed an artist’s or writer’s hideaway -- 100 yards from her Hollywood Hills home. Leifer sold the hideaway before she and Wolf bought in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Leifer, who turned 50 on Thursday, is a fixture on the stand-up circuit, and she is executive producer of an upcoming Nick at Nite show that stars Darlene Westgor, who as winner of the cable channel’s search for America’s funniest mom earned a shot at her own sitcom. Filming on the pilot has been completed.
Eric Lowry of Coldwell Banker, Sunset, represented Leifer in her real estate transactions.
She was in love, but that was then
When it comes to real estate, it would appear that Sharon Stone is fickle.
It seems like only yesterday that the actress bought a Beverly Hills-area home for just under $11 million. Actually, it was in April.
Now the five-bedroom, 9,000-square-foot home, on nearly 5 acres, is on the market again, this time at $12.5 million -- not high enough, it would seem, to be an attempt to fix and flip the house, which appeared to be in good shape, anyway. The gated estate, built in 1991, was completely refurbished in 2004, the same year Stone divorced San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein.
So what’s up?
A quick call to the listing agents revealed that Stone, who already owned a house in the area, never moved into this one, although she loved it at first sight.
It was simply an impulse purchase.
The screening room, gym, guesthouse, tennis court and meditation garden, surrounded by fruit trees, were too much to resist, they said.
Once back in her comfortable, longtime home, however, the movie star was like other people -- she had second thoughts.
Avrille Krom and Susan Smith have the listing at Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills.
Looking ahead
to a new chapter
Lionsgate, a French Normandy-style mansion built in Bel-Air in 1938, has come on the market at just under $30 million.
The 9,000-plus-square-foot home, on 1.6 acres, is owned by Nancy Davis. She’s the daughter of oil billionaire and onetime owner of 20th Century Fox studios Marvin Davis, who died in 2004 after enjoying a glamorous life in Los Angeles for at least two decades.
Nancy Davis, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 14 years ago, wrote the 2006 book “Lean on Me,” outlining steps to take in coping with MS and other diseases. She has owned the seven-bedroom, 12-bathroom Lionsgate since the late 1980s. She wants to move to a gated community.
The estate was owned previously by singer Kenny Rogers, who also once owned a Bel-Air home known as the Knoll that he sold to Marvin and Barbara Davis in the early 1980s.
Lionsgate has a guesthouse, a game room, a disco that is being turned into a screening room, a media room, a library, an art studio, a dance studio, a tennis court, a putting green and a 200-foot-long driveway.
Alex Davis, one of Nancy’s three sons, has the listing at Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills.
McMahon selling? You are correct, sir
Ed McMahon has listed his home in a gated Beverly Hills-area community at just under $7.7 million. The former “Tonight Show” sidekick for Johnny Carson wants to move closer to the heart of Beverly Hills.
His Mediterranean-style home has six bedrooms and five bathrooms in slightly more than 7,000 square feet. The house, built in 1989, has decorative fireplaces and a master-bedroom suite overlooking the yard and canyon. Other features are a pool, spa, lanai, library, sauna, sound studio and canyon-to-ocean views.
McMahon, 83, was Carson’s “Tonight Show” second banana from 1962 to 1992.
Alex Davis of Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
Teen on ‘Weeds’ puts down roots
Hunter Parrish, who plays Mary-Louise Parker’s 15-year-old son, Silas Botwin, in the Showtime series “Weeds,” has become a first-time home buyer.
He closed escrow on a two-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bathroom condo in the Hollywood Hills for $569,000 a few days after his 19th birthday.
The 1,400-square-foot unit, in a newly built development, has high ceilings, granite counters, stainless appliances and hardwood floors.
Parrish, who plays Earl Gornicke in the film “RV,” with Robin Williams, was represented by David Kean of Prudential California Realty, Hancock Park.
Kean also helped Parrish and his parents find a home when they moved to California from Texas in 2004.
To see previous columns on celebrity realty transactions, go to latimes.com/hotproperty.
