Comic actress seeks to sally forth
Actress Meg Ryan,who will star opposite Timothy Hutton in the December comedy “Serious Moonlight,” also seems to be getting serious about selling her Bel-Air home. She has put it back up for sale at $14.2 million -- a 27% price reduction from what she was asking a year ago.
The Spanish-style house, built in 1931, has been restored and features stenciled beam ceilings, arched doorways and ironwork. French doors open to city and ocean views, a loggia, a dining pavilion and the swimming pool. There are six bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 6,877 square feet. The four fireplaces include one in the guesthouse.
Ryan, 47, has been a leading lady in films such as “When Harry Met Sally . . . “ (1989), “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “You’ve Got Mail” (1998). Last year she starred in “The Women” and “My Mom’s New Boyfriend.”
She had listed the compound in October 2008 at $19.5 million but withdrew it from the market at the end of February.
The property was purchased in 2000 for $8,995,000, public records show.
The listing agent is David Offer of Prudential California Realty, Los Angeles, according to the Multiple Listing Service.
Malibu estate for aspiring vintners
A 37-acre Malibu estate has come on the market at $65 million, making it the most expensive listing on the MLS in the ocean-side community. Only a few Los Angeles-area residences for sale are priced higher.
Rocky Oaks Estate consists of a nearly completed Tuscan-style home, a 9,500-vine vineyard and pads for a potential helicopter landing site, guesthouse and guard gate. Perched on a ridgeline, the 9,000-square-foot house has 360-degree views. Its surrounding hillsides are filled with about 75 citrus trees, 50 fruit and nut trees, 100 avocado trees, 100 olive trees and more than 500 rosebushes.
Designed by architect Bob Easton, the residence is approached from a 350-foot-long gated driveway and has a large motor court. When completed in the spring, it will have five fireplaces, tongue-and-groove and exposed-beam ceilings (including one in the living room reaching 32 feet high), elevator access to all three floors and a rooftop observation deck. The five-bedroom, five-bathroom house will be clad in limestone.
There will be 5,000 square feet of decking, an infinity pool with a spa and a loggia, as well as a wine-tasting room. Malibu Rocky Oaks produced its first wines in 2006.
The owner, a businessman, was building the estate for himself but decided to sell it instead, according to listing agent Sally Forster Jones of the Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills East office.
Fame seems to like it here
A 1937 estate in Holmby Hills owned by radio and TV host Art Linkletter in the 1950s, Oscar-winning composer Henry Mancini in the 1990s and former Hollywood Park owner Marge Everett until 2005 has sold for $13.2 million.
The Georgian-style house includes nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms in about 12,000 square feet. The gated two-story has a formal entry with a sweeping spiral staircase, a paneled library with a hidden door to the wine cellar, a 50-foot-long screening room and staff quarters. It sits on about three-quarters of an acre with a front motor court, a swimming pool, a spa and a two-bedroom guesthouse.
The 2,500-square-foot master bedroom wing contains a sitting room, his and hers bathrooms, four of the home’s eight fireplaces, a sauna and a terrace overlooking the grounds.
The remodeled property originally came on the market in May 2008 at $27.5 million and previously sold in 2006 for $10.25 million, according to public records.
Jeeb Naiman O’Reilly of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, and Stephen Resnick of Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, had the listing. Eric Hassan of Coldwell Banker’s Beverly Hills East office represented the buyer.
Time for a change of ZIP Code?
Dr. Richard Ellenbogen,one of the surgeons featured in “Dr. 90210,” has listed his Sunset Strip-area home for $3,495,000.
The walled and gated villa has three bedrooms, a maid’s room and three bathrooms in 3,405 square feet. There are city views from balconies off the bedrooms. Built in 1953, the two-story house has a subterranean wine cellar, a media room and formal living and dining rooms. The grounds include wrought-iron gazebos, antique fountains, a koi pond, a waterfall, mature trees and a swimming pool.
Before buying the house more than a decade ago, Ellenbogen lived on a 118-acre oceanfront cattle ranch with year-round streams and a 3-acre pond in Gaviota, 30 miles west of Santa Barbara. “It was hard to leave,” he said. “But a busy cosmetic plastic surgery practice is not an Internet job, so I moved back to L.A., close to my office.”
He raised his son in the vine-covered house. Ellenbogen kept rare koi as large as 30 inches and had nearly 60 varieties of cactuses and succulents among the flowering plants. “I have planted the garden so there is color 12 months a year,” he said.
The stately home sits on a raised precipice and can accommodate an outdoor party of up to 150.
Ellenbogen, a board-certified plastic surgeon, appeared on the reality TV show in 2004 and 2005. “I was the balance they needed,” he said of his role as an experienced and credentialed physician. He is still very active in his Beverly Hills practice, has a patent pending on a stem cell technique and travels to Mexico and Colombia to do pro bono cleft lip work.
Juli LaVene of Keller Williams Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
Chief chops his asking price 20%
Update: Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton and his wife, Rikki Klieman,have re-listed their residence in Los Feliz at $1,499,000.
They originally put the L-shaped house on the market in July at $1,875,000, about a month before Bratton, 62, announced that he would be leaving the LAPD to run a private security firm on the East Coast. He steps down at the end of the month.
The walled and gated house, built in 1964, has four bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,716 square feet. The midcentury one-story home has a courtyard entry, outdoor entertainment areas with city views and a swimming pool and spa surrounded by mature trees and landscaping. Inside the post-and-beam house are vaulted ceilings, hardwood floors and an updated Mediterranean-style kitchen. Glass doors open to the pool.
The current asking price is a 20% reduction from the July listing, which was canceled in early October. The couple purchased the Los Feliz home in early 2003 for $1,244,000.
Bennett Carr of Sotheby’s International Realty’s Beverly Hills office and John Olsen of the Sunset Strip office now have the listing.
