Having spent seven or so years squirreled away in a secluded home deep in L.A.’s rustic and ritzy Mandeville Canyon, it looks like Billy Bob Thornton and his wife, former special effects makeup artist Connie Angland, are headed for the hills, Agoura Hills, Calif., that is, where they’ve ponied up a soupçon more than $3.1 million for a gated compound tucked into the fire-scarred foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains about forty typically traffic-clogged miles northwest of LAX.
The seller, per tax records, was musician Jason Wade, lead vocalist and guitarist of the alt-rock band Lifehouse. Wade shelled out $940,000 for the property in 2007 and online resources reveal it has been on and off the market for nearly three years. The far-too-high initial asking price of $4.25 million fell to $3.45 million before the Oscar-winning “Sling Blade” actor and star of Amazon Prime’s legal drama “Goliath” came along and shaved another few hundred thousand off the price.
Hidden away at the back of a not much publicized but unquestionably affluent guard-gated enclave, the slightly more than one-acre spread is a secluded self-contained idyll that backs up to open space. In addition to a circa 1981 Craftsman-inspired five-bedroom and 3.5 bath residence of almost 3,100 square feet, the compound includes a professional recording studio of more than 2,100 square feet and an identical pair of 400-square-foot apartments for weekend guests or live-in staff.
The property was listed with Laurane O’Quinn Aikins at Dilbeck Estates, while Thornton was represented in the transaction by Daniel Dill of Westside Estate Agency.