Three years after debuting on the market with a highly-publicized $165 million list price, Villa Firenze — the palatial Italianate-inspired estate tucked away within L.A.’s guard-gated Beverly Park community — has been auctioned off for a relatively paltry $51 million. Though that close number makes it the most expensive home ever sold at auction, it also represents a whopping, and shocking, 69% discount off the original ask. It should also strike fear into the hearts of any other Beverly Park residents currently looking to unload their homes, particularly Sylvester Stallone, whose far smaller Beverly Park mansion is currently saddled with a $110 million ask.
The $51 million number also may indicate that Beverly Park, while billed as the most secure, most prestigious, and most private gated community in all of Los Angeles, still can’t compete with the historic desirability of lower Bel Air and Holmby Hills, where similarly sized estates have sold for upwards of $100 million.
Records reveal the discount-minded new owner is Roy Eddleman, a Bel Air-based philanthropist and a life sciences entrepreneur who owns a sizable chunk of biotech firm Repligen. Probably not coincidentally, Eddleman’s longtime Bel Air residence, which starred in the 1981 Faye Dunaway classic “Mommie Dearest,” hit the market just days ago with a $19.8 million pricetag.
Eddleman’s new Beverly Park fiefdom was custom-built over several years in the 1990s for aircraft leasing billionaire Steve Udvar-Hazy, his longtime wife Christine, and their four children. The Udvar-Hazys — who are sometimes called the world’s wealthiest Mormon family — are now empty-nesters, so they had no need for their titanic complex, which sprawls over nearly 10 acres and includes a main house with more than 20,000 square feet of living space, plus multiple accessory structures.
The village-like estate sits on its own gated street within the Beverly Park gates, and additionally includes a detached garage building, a nearly 3,000-square-foot guesthouse and a smaller second guesthouse, and three detached cabanas strategically placed around the infinity-edged pool. There’s also a separate reflecting pool, dozens of palm trees and Italian cypresses, a football field-sized lawn, motorcourt, security building, and a full-size tennis court with viewing pavilions.
Couple all those amenities with the acres of manicured gardens and citrus orchards, property taxes, and Beverly Park’s steep HOA dues — which now top $3,000 per month — it seems likely that the annual running costs for an estate of this magnitude likely venture well into seven figure territory.
Though they’ve sold off their longtime main residence, the Hazys are far from homeless. The family still keeps a $30 million Tuscan-style estate within a guard-gated community on the coast in Dana Point, Calif., and they also own several other homes situated just outside the Beverly Park gates, including a contemporary structure with an infinity swimming pool and a Tuscan-style mini-mansion with its own infinity pool, both of which almost directly overlook Villa Firenze.
Jeff Hyland and Rick Hilton of Hilton & Hyland held the listing; Richard Klug of Sotheby’s International Realty repped Eddleman.