Owlwood Estate has just rung up as the second-priciest sale of a home ever in Los Angeles. The most expensive of all, the recently-sold Playboy Mansion, sits right around the corner. Forbes reports that the deal has closed for $90 million.
The mansion in tony Hombly Hills was built in 1936 in flashy Italian Renaissance style. At the time it was completed, it held the record as the largest private home in Los Angeles (it tallies in at 12,600 square feet) and, even by 2016 standards, is still five times larger than the average new house built in the U.S. Specs on the property include eight bedrooms, 12 baths, two guest houses, a pool, tennis court and, obviously, two guard stations to keep the unwashed masses from storming the iron gate.
Plenty of old-school celebrity stories would have been heard by flies on the house’s carved-hardwood-paneled walls. Previous owners have included one of the founders of 20th Century Fox, Joseph Schenck, who briefly kept his mistress, Marilyn Monroe, in a guest house; actor Tony Curtis and power-couple Cher and Sonny Bono, who purchased it in 1972 for $750,000.
When Sonny and Cher separated, the house was sold to investors who renovated it and held it until 2002, when it was sold to a founder of Ameriquest Mortgage Company (a company you may remember from its collapse amid the subprime mortgage crisis). Two neighboring parcels of land were purchased and added to the property, growing Owlwood’s plot to 10 acres.
The sellers had been shopping the property around quietly since 2013, looking for an estimated $150 million before settling for the $90 million deal offered by buyer Sturmer Pippin Investments, a corporation affiliated with developer Woodbridge Luxury Homes.
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