After selling his titanic Santa Monica compound — prominently featured in the original “Beverly Hills Cop” film — for nearly $50 million to billionaire Canadian heiress Taylor Thomson, Shane Smith and his longtime wife Tamyka are downsizing, in a manner of speaking, to the more laid-back town of Malibu. Records reveal the Canadian media mogul, who was instrumental in the creation of digital news company Vice Media, has forked over $11.7 million for a 1.2-acre spread with lush tropical landscaping and oodles of privacy.
Set deep within the Serra Retreat guard-gated community, the walled estate features a Moorish/Mediterranean-influenced main mansion with about 7,500 square feet of living space. Built in the 1970s but expanded in 1994 and renovated since, the house was sold to the Smiths by prominent Brazilian real estate developer Victor Malzoni Jr. and his wife Susan. The Malzonis acquired the property only about three years ago for $8.5 million; before that, the place had long been owned by billionaire Public Storage heir B. Wayne Hughes Jr. and his ex-wife Wendy.
Behind the charming jungle-like landscaping, the house offers a gated courtyard with a colonnade running past a bubbling fountain. A hand-carved wooden front door offers access to the interior spaces, which are uniformly palatial and vaguely reminiscent of the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh. Highlights include a baronial living room with French doors set into arched windows and a central skylight, extravagantly tall ceilings with massive beams throughout, a dining room with an antique brick ceiling, and a host of curated materials and finishes imported from Europe.
Chris Cortazzo of Compass and Laura Kalb of Hilton & Hyland held the listing; Santiago Arana of The Agency repped Smith.