One less house, one addition
Hot Property There’s nothing like an infant to change new parents’ plans. Witness Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
The actors, both 33, married in June and had intended to buy a new home together, but their child arrived Dec. 1, and house hunting was put on hold.
Affleck moved into Garner’s Brentwood residence and made a deal to sell his former Brentwood home for $5 million, with escrow to close this week. He had purchased it from singer Melissa Etheridge in January for $4 million.
The two-story, East Coast traditional is on nearly an acre and behind gates. It has five bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms in 4,500 square feet. It has a kitchen-family room and partial ocean views. The house, built in 1937, had been redone to emphasize its dark wood floors and sun-filled rooms. A playroom has a loft, and the master bedroom has two walk-in closets.
Garner’s series, “Alias,” is expected to end its five-year run in May. Never at a standstill since he and his childhood friend, actor Matt Damon, won an Oscar for their screenplay “Good Will Hunting” (1997), Affleck will star as George Reeves, TV’s Superman, in the upcoming movie “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” It’s in post-production and due out in 2006.
Don Heller of Prudential-John Aaroe, Beverly Hills, is representing the buyer of Affleck’s former home, and Brett Lawyer of Sotheby’s International Realty, Sunset Strip Brokerage, had the listing.
A sale made where O.J. once stood
The Brentwood site where the home of football star-turned-actor-turned-defendant O.J. Simpson once lived has been sold for $12.9 million. The asking price was $13.5 million. There were multiple offers.
Zachary Horowitz, the 52-year-old president and chief operating officer of Universal Music Group, bought the Mediterranean built on the property in 2001 after O.J.’s house was torn down.
The new house has nine bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, including a master-bedroom suite with a sitting room and a fireplace. There are six fireplaces in the estate as well as a theater, wine cellar, indoor and outdoor living rooms, a guesthouse with a gym, a tennis court, and a pool.
Simpson lived in the house when his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, were stabbed to death at her nearby town house in 1994. O.J. was forced to sell the five-bedroom, six-bathroom home in 1997 to comply with the civil court judgment that required him to pay $33.5 million to the families of his ex-wife and Goldman. The jury found that Simpson, previously acquitted of the murders in a criminal trial, was liable for the deaths.
Investment banker Kenneth Abdalla bought the house for about $4 million in 1997, razed it in 1998 and had it totally rebuilt.
Sorkin buys a separate wing
Aaron Sorkin, creator of “The West Wing,” recently purchased a Beverly Hills home for his wife, from whom he is separated, at a selling price of just under $5 million. Sorkin’s wife, attorney Julia Bingham, filed for divorce in November 2004.
The two-story traditional, built in 1937, was completely renovated earlier this year. The four-bedroom, 5 1/2 -bathroom home has a new kitchen-great room; a den with a fireplace; a large media room with a fireplace; a guesthouse; and a pool with a fountain.
Sorkin, 44, wrote the play “A Few Good Men,” which made its Broadway debut in 1989 and was turned into a film in 1992.
This fall, he clinched a deal for the new series “Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip,” to run on NBC next fall. Sorkin and his frequent collaborator, Thomas Schlamme, will be executive producers of the series billed as a behind-the-scenes look at a late-night network entertainment show like “Saturday Night Live.”
Other Fred selling Laguna estate
Fred Siegel has listed his Laguna Beach home at $26.5 million.
It’s not Fred Segal, the clothing mogul with the trendy boutiques in Santa Monica and on Melrose Avenue. It’s Fred Siegel, who for years manufactured products sold by Herbalife.
Siegel is the third owner of the 18-year-old Rockledge by the Sea, an acre-plus estate with panoramic ocean views and 190 feet of coastline that includes a secluded cove accessed by just two other properties.
The multilevel house was designed by Ed Lohrbach and has an array of terraces, patios and fountains plus a reflecting pool, spa, sauna and waterfall.
The estate also has a gated motor-court, rolling lawns, built-in teak and burled ash cabinets, a lounge with a sunken bar, a media room with stepped seating, an exercise room with mirrored walls, and an elevator.
There are six bedrooms and 7 1/2 bathrooms in the mansion’s 10,000 square feet, which Siegel says are too many feet for one person -- him. That’s why he’s selling.
Dave Schaar has the listing at Prudential California Realty.
To see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions visit latimes.com/hotproperty.
