Former Disney Home Stays in Hollywood Hands
A showbiz-pedigreed property in L.A.’S celeb-studded Toluca Lake community, once home to Walt Disney’s late nephew Roy E. Disney and now owned by the former Disney executive’s surviving wife, came up for sale about two months ago at almost $5 million. Listed with Jennifer Hughes at Bulldog Realty, the lakefront property is now in escrow for an unknown amount — and unsubstantiated scuttlebutt on the celebrity real estate street has it that the next owner will be six-time Emmy winning “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston. Built in the mid-1930s and previously owned by Boris Karloff and Oscar-winning composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the humbly proportioned if hardly inexpensive Mediterranean contains three bedrooms and three bathrooms in a skosh less than 2,500 square feet.
Mature olive trees shade a walled courtyard entrance; the living room is dominated by a baronial stone fireplace under a wood-beamed cathedral ceiling; and a separate dining room is informally open to an up-to-date kitchen with high-end
appointments. There are two guest bedrooms plus a paneled office with dual built-in workstations on the main floor. The upper level, accessible via colorfully tile-accented stairs or elevator, is devoted to a master suite that comprises a cozy bedroom and separate study. Outside, a broad terrace with built-in barbecue and outdoor fireplace overlooks a wee patch of grass, a plunge-sized swimming pool and a lakeside lounging deck with a small dock for a boat that can putter around the six-acre lake.
Harry Styles Loses Big on Sale of Sunset Strip Pad
Harry Styles was so ready to get rid of his sleekly appointed pied-à-terre above Los Angeles’ chic Sunset Strip, he’s taken a huge loss on the property, selling the multilevel contemporary after more than two years on the market for $6 million, a pearl- clutching $870,000 less than he paid 3½ years ago.
The One Direction megastar — the popular boy band has been on indefinite hiatus the past few years — picked up the just over 4,400-square-foot property in early 2016 and flipped it back on the market the following year with an in-hindsight ridiculously high asking price of nearly $8.5 million. The price of the four-bedroom, six-bathroom city-view pad eventually fell to a bit less than $6.3 million.
A gated drive sweeps up to the front of the house, and a huge bank of floor-to- ceiling glass panels in the white-floored combination living and dining room vanish into the walls to unite the light-filled space with a sun-splashed terrace that offers a panoramic, over-the treetops view across a vast swath of Los Angeles. There’s also a small fitness/yoga room and a professional-grade home theater. A roof terrace offers a fire pit and city view. Tucked discreetly under the terrace outside the living- dining room, a curtained loggia with outdoor shower area overlooks a wall of bamboo that forms a privacy barrier behind a kidney-shaped swimming pool and raised circular spa. The property was listed with Kurt Rappaport and Carl Gambino, both with Westside Estate Agency, while the buyer was represented by Redfin agent Alec Traub.
Blake Griffin Dribbles to New House in Studio City
Though Blake Griffin was traded last year from the L.A. Clippers to the Detroit Pistons on a three-year contract worth more than $100 million, it appears he plans to keep a solid real estate foothold in Southern California. Earlier this year, the power forward dropped $4 million on a newly constructed house in affluent Manhattan Beach. And a plugged-in property snitch swears he’s also the buyer of a freshly built residence in Studio City that recently went for close to $2.3 million. With the groundfloor exterior painted inky black and a second floor clad in vertical strips of wood that make it an architectural standout among the unassuming surrounding bungalows, the modern farmhouse-style home provides four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in about 2,700 square feet.
Oak floorboards in the long, slender entrance gallery extend into a crisply rendered contemporary kitchen that opens over a huge, marble-topped island to a combination living and dining room featuring a wood-paneled ceiling, floor-to- ceiling built-ins and a bank of glass panels that vanish into the walls. There’s a study/bedroom and bathroom on the main floor and two more en suite guest bedrooms upstairs along with a master suite replete with fireplace, two walk-in closets and a roomy bathroom with deep soaking tub and steam shower. The hedge-privatized backyard isn’t spacious but comfortably comprises a sizable shaded patio, an outdoor kitchen and a narrow strip of lawn alongside a waterfall-fed plunge pool and spa. The listing was held by Dennis Chernov of Keller Williams Realty Studio City; Griffin was repped by Shelly Mashiach at MGB Realty.
Donald De Line Lists Hancock Park Mansion
Veteran industry executive and film producer Donald De Line has hung a $10.5 million price tag on his soigné French Regency-inspired villa in a prime pocket of L.A.’S prestigious Hancock Park neighborhood. The “Italian Job” producer, who’s working on the long anticipated, Margot Robbie-starring feature “Marian,” based on the Robin Hood folktales, acquired the mansion almost 11 years ago for $4.6 million. Based on digital marketing materials from the time of his purchase, the existing house appears to be a radical transformation from the Colonial-style home that stood on the property at that time.
Listed with Carl Gambino of Westside Estate Agency and all but invisible behind a high wall on close to half an acre of meticulously groomed grounds that border the tony Wilshire Country Club, the sprawling, mansard-roofed residence is configured with five and potentially six bedrooms and six full bathrooms plus two side-by-side powder rooms off the gracefully slim entrance hall. Grandly proportioned formal living and dining rooms, with light oak floorboards and gigantic, delicately paned floor-to- ceiling windows, are complemented by an expensively stocked gourmet kitchen, an informal dining room with French doors to the yard and a fireplace-anchored den wrapped in pale oak paneling. Bedrooms are sprinkled throughout the house for maximum privacy and include a secluded main-floor master suite and, conveniently accessible by two staircases and an elevator, a trio of second-floor guest bedrooms, along with a lounge and several huge storage rooms.
A covered terrace that spans the rear of the residence incorporates an outdoor living room with fireplace set into a stone-faced wall. There are also fastidiously clipped parterre gardens, a swimming pool surrounded by stone terracing and an alfresco poolside cabana that can be closed up with louvered doors.
Dana Brunetti Lands Buyer in Toluca Lake
Film and television producer Dana Brunetti has hoisted a remodeled 1920s Spanish- style estate in Toluca Lake up for sale at $6.25 million. Not counting carrying costs, extensive upgrades and considerable real estate fees, the six-time Emmy-nominated “House of Cards” producer and twotime Oscar nominee (“The Social Network,” “Captain Phillips”) seeks to almost double his money on the property he purchased about 3½ years ago for a bit more than $3.8 million from Grammy-winning musician Dave Stewart.
Set behind an ivy- encrusted privacy wall and jointly listed with Cassandra Corum at Six17 and Marc Silver at Compass, the three-story spread measures in at a mite more than 6,500 square feet, with five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, including a natural light-filled master bedroom and a skylight-topped master bathroom replete with steam shower and copper soaking tub opposite a marble fireplace.
Carefully preserved and/or masterfully re- created architectural details are luxuriously complemented by state- of-theart creature comforts. Just inside the front door, the spacious double parlor’s smaller room, furnished as a library/game room with built-in bookshelves and a sleekly curvaceous, metal-trimmed billiard table, is anchored by a minimalist fireplace beneath a simple wood mantel. The larger space, roomy enough to comfortably accommodate a glitzy white grand piano and an almost comically long, plushly upholstered sectional sofa, features intricate plaster friezes over the windows.
The property does not have frontage on tiny Toluca Lake but is one of the roughly three dozen homes with deeded access to the water — via discreet doors behind the pool that open to a private parklet that meanders down to the shore.