“Future Man” star and producer Josh Hutcherson has sold his celeb-pedigreed pad along a famously star-lined street above L.A.’s fabled Laurel Canyon for not quite $2.95 million, a substantial chunk under the almost $3.5 million asking price.
Built in 1951 and secreted away well below the street behind a secured entry gate, the almost 1,900-square-foot organic contemporary was once the home of furniture designer Guy Chaddock. Ellen DeGeneres briefly owned the two-bed/two-bath hillside cabin, lucratively selling it to late actor Heath Ledger in 2005 for $2.3 million — about $1 million more than she’d paid the previous year. Ledger’s estate shed the house in 2008 for $2.5 million and Hutcherson acquired the property in 2012 at the same price from a Miami-based limited liability company.
The unique and humbly proportioned residence is aptly known as the Tree House due to its scenic perch on a hillside amid the fluttering leaves of a dense Sycamore grove. Inside, polished concrete floors are balanced by vaulted, exposed-wood ceilings. The living room, anchored by a massive masonry fireplace, and the separate dining room spill easily out to an unusually huge, 2,500-square-foot deck designed for day-to-day outdoor living. The galley kitchen is a model of culinary simplicity; there’s a small office with built-in desk; and both bathrooms feature showers with floor-to-ceiling windows that look into secluded parts of the property. There’s a quiet, courtyard garden at the front of the house and the super-sized, trellis-covered deck at the back incorporates a built-in grilling area and an outdoor screening room decked out with thick-cushioned banquettes and a movie screen that drops out of a discreet wooden box on the ceiling.
The property was listed with Deedee Howard and Charlie Heydt at The Agency; the buyer was repped by Paul Salazar at Hilton & Hyland.
Last year, the “Hunger Games” franchise star, who’s owned a handsome and fully updated, 1930s East Coast traditional in a coveted area of Studio City since 2014, when he snatched it up for $1.25 million, shelled out nearly $2 million — a notable $300,000 over the asking price — for a modestly proportioned three-bedroom home in L.A.’s trendy Silver Lake neighborhood.