Eric Schmidt’s Daughter Pays $29 Million for the House Across the Street

When this brand-new 90210 mansion first hit the market last spring, it probably struck fear into the hearts of party-averse neighbors. The house is big enough for a large family, with five bedrooms in more than 10,000 square feet, but its layout and look suggested an entirely different use, something that was not-so-subtly backed up by its marketing campaign.

“Designed for entertaining,” with a vast roof deck that “can fit 300 people for a sit-down dinner” and a primary bedroom that is “the ultimate Deco Fantasy with walls paneled in Macassar and velvet,” plus not one or two but four kitchens, the listing touted the ultra-contemporary spread’s suitability for grand parties and galas. But it lies on a treacherously narrow and winding street in the mountains above Beverly Hills, potentially making for a traffic nightmare.

So what’s a good neighbor to do? Rather than waiting to file noise complaints after a young crypto billionaire or a trying-to-stay-young divorced tech mogul bought the sexy bachelor pad, the person directly across the street preemptively took matters into her own hands. After it languished nearly a year on the market with a $34 million asking price, records indicate Sophie Schmidt paid just over $29 million to buy out the property herself.

What Schmidt eventually plans to do with the place is anyone’s guess. But she maintains a quiet lifestyle, and her main L.A. residence remains the $22 million house across the road. For now, the raucous parties appear to be semi-permanently on hold.

Rest assured that the Rest of World journalism startup founder can well afford her $51.2 million compound. The 35-year-old is the only living child of tech tycoon Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO from 2001-2011. Forbes says the elder Schmidt is worth $20 billion, making him the world’s 70th-richest human.

From the street, Sophie Schmidt’s latest acquisition bears a somewhat startling resemblance to the Starship Enterprise. The curvaceous home was built on speculation by longtime Beverly Hills resident Daphna Ziman, the ex-wife of real estate baron Richard Ziman, and designed by Ryder Design & Architecture in collaboration with iD Group. Save for some thin slits of glass near the roofline, the façade is window-free, and a huge gate opens to the rooftop deck, which doubles as a 15-car motorcourt.

An elevator and a skylit elliptical staircase ferry occupants to the mansion’s various levels, where they’ll alternately find a security suite for a full-time bodyguard, a screening room, gym, and a game room with a wet bar. Out back, a grassy lawn juts out to the 92-foot-long, infinity-edged pool. Curiously, none of the home’s four kitchens are pictured in listing photos, but they include a main kitchen with charcoal gray cabinetry, a smaller catering kitchen and a full outdoor kitchen servicing the backyard.

Real estate runs in Schmidt’s blood; her father is one of the world’s top collectors of trophy properties, with a personal portfolio valued at north of $300 million. Major holdings include sumptuous homes in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Malibu. But for many years, the Schmidt family’s main residence has been an elegant compound nestled onto a whisper-quiet street in Atherton, Calif., a small town in Silicon Valley.