Last year, legendary KISS rocker and reality TV veteran Gene Simmons placed his mammoth 90210 mansion on the market, telling fans that while he doesn’t “want to cry the Beverly Hills blues,” the sky-high tax rates in California and Beverly Hills are simply “unacceptable.” The 71-year-old’s plan is to sell his L.A. estate — which is newly renovated and remains available for showings to qualified buyers — and relocate to a 24-acre ranch he owns in the Mount Rainier area of Washington, where there are no state income taxes.
Be that as it may, it appears Simmons and his longtime wife Shannon Tweed still plan to keep a part-time foothold in sunny SoCal. Records reveal the pair have just added a new crown to their residential family jewels, shoveling out $5.8 million for a mountaintop house in Malibu, with vertigo-inducing views of the Pacific Ocean.
The 3,700-square-foot house was built in 1975 as an architecturally vague, red tile-roofed villa and last sold in 2014 for $1.9 million to Wolfgang Buehler, a Glendora, Calif.-based investor. Buehler subsequently remodeled every inch of the structure into a modernist extravaganza with walls of glass embracing 360-degree vistas of the mountains and sea. There’s also an all-new pool with an inset spa and Baja shelf for sunbathing.
A long driveway climbs up a nearly sheer cliff, summiting at a large motorcourt that fronts the attached three-car garage. A lighted, railing-free stairway twists up past a cactus garden — ladies in heels, watch your step — to an all-glass front door.