Powerhouse record producer Rick Rubin lost not just one but two multimillion-dollar Malibu homes to the Woolsey fire that ferociously tore through the Santa Monica Mountains in November of 2018. Almost a year later, the famously wooly bearded music world impresario splashed out $8.1 million on a humbly proportioned if hardly inexpensive four-bedroom ocean-view home set behind gates on Malibu’s popular Point Dume.
The .83-acre bluff-top spread was quickly and extensively revamped into a muscular and stylishly utilitarian organic meets minimalist retreat with just two bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus a powder room for guests, in close to 2,300 square feet.
With several other homes across Los Angeles, the Def Jam Records co-founder and nine-time Grammy winner — his most recent win came in 2021, in the Best Rock Album category, for The Strokes album “The New Normal” — has now put the home up for rent at a whopping $75,000 per month. Listings held by Chris Cortazzo of Compass show the tenant will be required to put down a hefty $150,000 security deposit.
Built in 1965, the midcentury ranch-style residence has been distilled to its functional essence, with wide-plank wood floors, much of which have been epoxied white, vaulted and beamed exposed wood ceilings, and walls of glass that slide open for a seamless integration between indoor and outdoor spaces.
The spacious, light-filled great room is divided by a brick fireplace column painted jet black. To one side is a step-down living room that flows out to a covered deck with ship-like horizon views over the grassy backyard and glinting ocean. On the other side is a huge, bespoke, and somewhat deconstructed kitchen with two huge islands, a giant dining table and glass slider access to a pair of courtyard patios.
The bedrooms flank the main living space. One of the bedrooms, with a walk-in closet and en suite bath, has been converted to an ocean-view media room and listening lounge, while the larger primary suite, which also faces the ocean, is plenty big enough to float a custom-built bed in the center to the room. The primary suite’s bathroom includes a red-light therapy system, heated floors, and a teak courtyard deck with outdoor shower.
Other extra-special amenities include a Sonos sound system, soft-closing doors (no door-slamming tantrums here!), and a whole-house water filtration system. There’s a classic redwood hot tub outside the primary bedroom, while a deck near the bluff’s precipitous edge has a redwood cold plunge and a sauna barrel with a large window for scanning the coastline while sweating out toxins.
While it seems unlikely Rubin will leave Malibu all together — he still owns the legendary Shangri-La recording studio in the foothills above Point Dume — he has a couple of other homes in L.A. to choose from: a fabled Laurel Canyon estate known as “the Mansion,” as well as a 9,000-square-foot home hidden just above the Sunset Strip.
