Sitcom superstar Patricia Heaton, who has made a decades-long career portraying humorously sassy hardworking middle-class mothers, has quietly sold her decidedly upper-class manse in L.A.’s tony Toluca Lake area in a clandestine off-market deal valued at $7.5 million. The sale price is a small fortune above the $5.4 million the thrice Emmy-winning “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “The Middle” star and her husband David Hunt paid for the stately villa back in 2013. The property was sold through Craig Strong at Compass, who also represented the buyer, a not-famous but clearly very well financed attorney and his wife.
Little changed outside but extensively updated inside, the elegant stone-faced mansion was designed by architect Kevin Clark and built in the late 1990s on about three-quarters of an acre behind electronic gates and a tall hedgerow with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in more than 7,600 square feet. Long-term guests or live-in domestic staff are comfortably accommodated in a detached two-bedroom guesthouse.
Though the house was not available on the open market, dug up digital marketing materials indicate Old World opulence — think heavy-duty crown moldings and antique fireplace mantelpieces along with a mix of marble and hardwood floors — merges seamlessly with new-fangled technologies that include a comprehensive home automation system that controls the heating and cooling, the audio/visual systems, the window coverings, the lighting and, of course, the camera-equipped security apparatus.
The grand living room doubles as a screening room, the dining room includes a bar for pre- and post-dinner cocktails, and the newly refurbished kitchen and adjoining family room spill easily out to the backyard’s myriad leisure and recreation options. Family bedrooms have refreshed bathrooms, and the sumptuous master suite incorporates a study and a deluxe bathroom complete with radiant heated floor and steam shower. Other notable creature comforts include a games room, two home offices, a new gym, a music room and a staff suite.
Completely private from the prying eyes of neighbors, the backyard is ringed by tall hedging and lushly landscaped with velvety lawns and mature specimen trees. A huge entertainment terrace offers plenty of room for al fresco dining and lounging near a built-in grill and bar. The swimming pool and spa is freshly jazzed up with glass tiles and a small poolside pavilion is convenient for bathroom breaks, changing out of wet bathing suits and pool toys storage.
Heaton, whose most recent sitcom gig, “Carol’s Second Act,” was canceled after the first season, and Hunt previously owned an almost 8,400-square-foot 1920s Elmer Grey-designed Italianate villa in the hoity-toity Hancock Park neighborhood. They scooped up the impressively ornamented home in 2001 for $4.85 million, had it photographed for Architctural Digest in 2009 and, after first floating it as an off-market listing with an asking price whispered to be around $12 million, sold it in May 2013 for $8 million to an investor who flipped it the following year for $8.8 million to television supernova Shonda Rhimes who, coincidentally enough, gave the place a thorough overhaul spearheaded by Michael S. Smith before it was featured in Architectural Digest in 2019.