It appears serial TV series creator Josh Schwartz has caught a raging, not to mention frighteningly expensive case of The Real Estate Fickle. It wasn’t even a year ago that the “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.” creator splashed out $8.1 million on a freshly renovated classic California ranch meets new-fangled modern farmhouse style home set behind gates on almost 2.3 acres in the Sherman Oaks area of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
He quickly engaged the coveted (and costly) services of innovative and celebrated L.A. architect Barbara Bestor, and embarked on what listings held by Jeff Yarbrough at Keller Williams Realty Beverly Hills describe as a “studs-out remodel” of the nearly 8,700-square-foot main residence, plus “finishing touches” on the guest quarters, pool house and basement-level screening room. That’s right, kiddos, Mr. Schwartz planned to drop what is surely a small fortune to extensively overhaul a just-remodeled mansion for which he paid more than $8 million bucks.
Alas, the television dynamo, who’s created, developed, written for and produced a slew of TV shows, often with Stephanie Savage, including the reboots of “Nancy Drew” and the 1980s primetime melodrama “Dynasty,” has abandoned the renovation and tossed the under-construction home back on the market at $6.85 million, a bank account busting $1.25 million loss, not counting design fees, carrying costs, construction bills or real estate fees. Marketing materials show the six-bedroom and seven-bath spread is being sold unfinished with “plans, permits, and budgets” that would allow the next owner to continue the ongoing work or, if they chose, to work with another architect and/or contractor.