It was married actors Ali Larter and Hayes MacArthur who, so swears all-but unimpeachable celebrity real estate snitch Yolanda Yakketyyak, shelled out the full asking price of $3.995 million for a 1920s ranch-style fixer-upper deep in the casually ritzy Rustic Canyon area of Santa Monica, Calif. The existing residence, reasonably well maintained but woefully dated and most assuredly headed for a costly and comprehensive overhaul, measures in at 3,516 square feet with five bedrooms and five bathrooms.
A wide, terra-cotta tiled gallery with pitched ceiling and a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors to the yard links the various formal and informal living spaces of the L-shaped residence that includes a spacious step down living room and office/library divided by a free-standing fireplace, a dining room with vintage brick fireplace and palace-style Parquet de Versailles hardwood floors, and a small, circa 1970s kitchen that’s open over a peninsula counter to a sky-light topped informal dining area or den. One of the guest bedrooms, wrapped in cheap wood paneling, has a built-in desk space, a second guest bedroom has a skylight-topped raised ceiling and the master suite, which overlooks to the backyard, includes a grimly dated bathroom with sunken tub and a deluxely roomy dressing room lined with built-in wardrobes. The back of the house opens to a flat, grassy yard and terraced gardens that step up to a bullet-shaped swimming pool backed by a low concrete retaining wall and a dense, privatizing wall of trees and foliage.
Larter, a teen model turned “Heroes” and “Resident Evil” horror franchise star and MacArthur, who co-stars opposite Rashida Jones in the pun-filled detective spoof “Angie Tribeca,” previously owned an approximately 5,500-square-foot three-story contemporary on a largely wooded half-acre lot in the Nichols Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills they bought in June 2009 for $2.925 million. The comely couple briefly set the property out for sale in the fall of 2015 at $4.85 million before they re-listed it in March 2016 at a more realistic $4.295 million and sold it two months later to a deep-pocketed DJ for $4.15 million.
listing photos: The Agency
