Late last year, Chris Martin shelled out $12.5 million for a lavish estate on Malibu’s Point Dume, arguably the West Coast neighborhood equivalent of the Hamptons. Once owned by controversial Hollywood producer Ryan Kavanaugh, the one-acre property includes a 5,300-square-foot, Nantucket-inspired mansion and a detached guesthouse, both of them protected by big gates and top-notch security systems. Martin reportedly shared the property with his partner, actress Dakota Johnson.
But times change. Records reveal Martin has now sold that landlocked house. And the English musician reaped the fruits of a red-hot real estate market — his off-market deal closed at $14.4 million, a hefty $1.9 million more than Martin paid for the place just 14 months ago. The spendy buyer is Florence Azria, wife of fashion mogul Serge Azria. (In October, the Azrias sold their custom-built Malibu estate in the nearby Paradise Cove community for $177 million, the most ever paid for a California home.)
Though he still owns three other Point Dume-area properties — a John Lautner=designed home, a smaller cottage and the Malibu Playhouse estate — Martin has taken that $14.4 million and quickly dumped $14 million of it on yet another Point Dume house, this one only a few short blocks away from the place he just sold. Like the just-sold property, the newly-acquired Martin estate is also landlocked and was not publicly available for sale.
Despite being roughly the same price, the new house is significantly smaller than Martin’s old place, weighing in at roughly 3,500 square feet. But the lot is also substantially more private and larger, spanning nearly a full 1.5 acres. Last sold for $7.4 million in 2017 to real estate developer Steve Zimmerman, the place also transferred with a coveted “beach key” that provides easy access to Malibu’s stupendously scenic Little Dume Beach. (While it’s technically public, most of the access points for reaching this particular beach are guarded by locked gates, making it ideal for celebrity sunbathers.)
Take a look at Martin and Johnson’s former lovenest, the place he just sold.