Style is subjective, but this Malibu home certainly tries its best to impress everyone with its smorgasbord of looks. Fans of offbeat contemporary and Gothic architecture might love the monochromatically all-charcoal, vaguely Tudor-inspired exterior. Classic beach house aficionados will find solace in the soft neutral colors of the casually luxe interior. And everybody will love the huge grassy backyard, which is ringed by a stunning perimeter of eucalyptus trees.
Described in the listing as a “modern country farmhouse” and built in 2001, the 5,200-square-foot structure has been renovated several times over the past two decades. It’s second owner was Maura Kaplan, a daughter of actor Leslie Neilson, who sold the property in 2012 to Dave Mathews Band bassist Stefan Lessard. Less than a year later, Lessard flipped the property to apparel mogul James Perse, who gave the sprawling house a makeover in his signature minimalist style before oil heiress Aileen Getty bought it, in 2016, for $12.5 million.
Since 2017, Getty has been trying to unload the property, initially at a $14 million ask that dropped to $12 million. No one bit, and so Getty gave the place another decor makeover before successfully flipping it last week to Rob Eloff and Nicole Ross Eloff, the latter a New York society staple and heiress to the Time Warner media empire created by her father, the late Stephen Jay Ross.
The Ross family has a well-documented affinity for trophy real estate. Back in 2014, David Geffen famously paid Eloff’s mother Courtney Sale Ross more than $50 million for the so-called Cody House, her titanic Georgica Pond-fronting estate in the Hamptons. (Geffen sold that property just two years later to upgrade to an even grander Hamptons spread.) And in 2012, Sale Ross sold her titanic duplex apartment in Manhattan’s ultra-exclusive 740 Park Avenue building for $52.5 million to billionaire Howard Marks.
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Image Credit: Redfin Though it’s landlocked with no ocean view, Eloff’s gated Malibu spread comes with plenty of attractive amenities: coveted beach keys to Little Dume Beach, which is about as close to a completely private beach as you’ll find in the city, and that wondrously huge backyard, which includes an oversized swimming pool and enough grass for several simultaneous games of croquet. The 1.8-acre lot has plenty of room for a sports court and guesthouse, should Eloff want to add either of those.
Set far back from the street on a quiet Point Dume cul-de-sac, the estate also features white oak hardwood floors throughout, two living rooms bisected by a dual-sided fireplace, an open kitchen with a massive glass-fronted refrigerator, and an upstairs master suite overlooking the pancake-flat backyard.
Getty now resides in Los Feliz, where back in 2019 she paid Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine $4.1 million for a rather beautiful midcentury modern house in the hills.
As for Eloff, she’s only 38 but has been playing in the high-stakes luxury property sandbox for well over a decade. Back in 2007, she paid $7.3 million for a penthouse in Manhattan’s Soho district that was sold eight years later for $9.7 million. In 2015, she spent $8.5 million for a Tribeca condo that was dumped at a $225,000 loss in 2019. Besides her new Malibu spread, Eloff’s current residences include a grand 1890s townhouse in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, acquired last year for $8 million, and a striking two-story home in the Hamptons hamlet of Amagansett, currently on the market with a $7.5 million list price.
Brett Lawyer of Hilton & Hyland held the listing; Chris Cortazzo of Compass repped Eloff.
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