When Donald Glover’s stunning starter home in the sleepy Los Angeles suburb of La Cañada Flintridge first hit the market in February, the listing attracted substantial publicity from Dirt and other outlets. One of the deep-pocketed folks who caught wind of the sale was Mark Fischbach, the 31-year-old gaming YouTuber better known as Markiplier. Fischbach quickly won the keys to the place, paying exactly $4 million — $15,000 over the asking price — for the estate.
Of course, it’s no surprise that Fischbach can afford to afford to pay millions for a home; he’s one of the most successful YouTubers of all time, with upwards of 15 billion lifetime video views, 29 million subscribers, and a widely reported $35 million net worth. It’s a big come up for the Hawaii-born University of Cincinnati dropout, who was born to an American army veteran and a Korean mother, and grew up poor in the Cincinnati suburbs.
Fischbach and his longtime partner Amy Nelson will be decamping to La Cañada from the Echo Park neighborhood, where back in 2016 he paid just over $1.6 million for a newly-built contemporary house with three bedrooms and four baths in about 3,000 square feet of hard-edged living space, all of it set behind camera-watched gates.
As for the new property, the ex-Glover estate lies on a twisty mountain road, with the house well hidden from the road behind gates and a long driveway. Built circa 1953 by obscure Pasadena architect Keith P. Marston and renovated during Glover’s ownership by top L.A. designer Barbara Bestor — who’s also responsible for the dynamic recent remodel of John Lautner’s iconic “Silvertop” mansion — the low-slung house structure offers about 3,300 square feet of living space, and last sold in 2016 for about $2.7 million.