Last summer he sold a semi-remote mountaintop home in the mountains above Malibu at a notable loss — he took in $235,000 less than the $2.1 million paid slightly more than a year earlier — but that financial gut punch has not stopped One Republic bass guitarist Brent Kutzle from paying indie film and television maestro Mark Duplass and actress Katie Aselton a whopping $5.7 million for an architect-designed contemporary in L.A.’s perennially trendy and, as evidenced by this sale, ever-more spendy Silver Lake neighborhood.
Duplass, a writer, director, producer and actor whose recent projects include “Room 104,” “Cinema Toast,” and the animated hit “Big Mouth,” on which he voices the sadistic Val Bilzarian character, and Aselton, who appeared in this year’s not-particularly successful supernatural horror film “The Unholy,” realized a hefty profit on the striking home they purchased from British film producer Callum Greene in 2014 for $4.45 million. While they didn’t get anywhere near their original asking price of $6.75 million, the $5.7 million sale price still makes it the second most expensive single-family home to sell in the Silver Lake area behind the $8.55 million music industry executive Luke Wood forked over in 2014 for the magnificently melodramatic John Lautner-designed home known as Silvertop.
Designed by renowned local architect Barbara Bestor — who, coincidentally enough, was engaged by Wood to refresh Silvertop — and completed in 2006, the three-story concrete, glass and redwood stunner offers flexible living spaces with a total of five bedrooms and four full and two half bathrooms in about 7,300 square feet.
Snazzy sui generis design details include a carved wood front door crafted from a design by Frank Lloyd Wright, and a living room clad entirely in warm and rich tongue-and-groove wood planks but for the massive stone fireplace and huge picture windows. A petite double-height library just off the living room leads to a pair of home offices and a powder room, and the separate dining room is in convenient proximity to the combination gourmet eat-in kitchen and family room where a full-height wall of windows vanishes into the wall to expose the multipurpose space to the sunny backyard.
Upstairs are a lofted lounge with built-in desk, two guest bedrooms that share a bathroom, and a homeowner’s suite that showcases ethereal hand-painted wall coverings. There’s also a fireplace, dual bathrooms, a huge two-room walk-in closet and dressing room, and direct access to a meandering roof-top terrace with a curtained cabana that offers panoramic views over the neighborhood. A separate, two-story wing beyond the kitchen/family room offers another bedroom, plus a games room, while a gym is discreetly tucked on the lowest level behind the garage and includes a private bath and outside entrance that makes it well suited for use as a staff suite.
The one-third-acre parcel allows for numerous patios and decks, one sheathed in vines with an outdoor fireplace and another with a built-in fire pit. Additionally, there’s a stretch lawn alongside the dark-bottom swimming pool and spa, as well as an infrared sauna and an outdoor movie screen.
The property was co-listed with Karen Lower of Compass and Jon Grauman at The Agency, while Kutzle and wife Jackie Leslie were represented by Lorraine Getz, also of Compass.
Kutzle, a multi-instrumentalist music dynamo who’s sold more than 16 million records with One Republic and performed with and/or penned pop ditties for the likes of Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding and Kelly Clarkson, does not have far to schlepp his belongings; He owns another boxy contemporary in the Silver Lake neighborhood that he and wife Jackie Leslie picked up a bit more than two years ago in an off-market deal valued at a tad above $2.4 million. Tax records indicate the couple also maintains a scenically sited 20-plus-acre spread near the kooky and touristic Bavarian-themed town of Leavenworth, Wash., about 120 miles east of Seattle.
As for Duplass and Aselton, they own several homes across Los Angeles, including a stunning, rustic-modern compound in the once unsung now quite popular Valley Village area of the San Fernando Valley that they scooped up last fall for about $3.1 million.