Back in summer 2015, amid extensive online chatter, actor Patrick Dempsey sold his pedigreed Malibu estate for exactly $15 million. Built by ballyhooed “starchitect” Frank Gehry, the starkly idiosyncratic property known as the Tin House was featured in Architectural Digest during Dempsey’s ownership.
The home’s lucky new owner, septuagenarian Texas oil/gas billionaire Sid Bass, purchased the house for his younger daughter, New York-based socialite Samantha Bass. Though she apparently enjoyed her new Malibu digs — and even expanded the compound by purchasing an adjacent property — the good times quickly ground to a screeching halt last November (2018), when the multi-acre spread was engulfed by the Woolsey Fire.
Although it’s not publicly known whether Bass plans to rebuild, the 1980s high society gossip column staple has not forsaken Malibu; to the contrary, he’s already purchased new local housing for Samantha. Located in Point Dume — Malibu’s most star-studded neighborhood — the landlocked 1.33-acre estate cost a breathtaking $14 million.
The deal was inked off-market, so few details and photos are available. But records show the property’s low-slung ranch house was built in 1957 and last sold two years ago for just $3.65 million. The buyer, luxury real estate developer Saffron Case, quickly renovated the home in her casually swank contemporary aesthetic.
There are five bedrooms and five bathrooms, an open-concept floorplan, floor-to-ceiling walls of glass, and multiple fireplaces in approximately 3,000 square feet of living space. Additional features include a large swimming pool, a backyard firepit plus full outdoor kitchen, a two-car garage and detached guesthouse. Perhaps most valuably, however, the property includes a coveted key that unlocks the gate to all-but-private Little Dume Beach, tucked beneath the cliffs far from those pesky paparazzi.
Some of the Basses’ nearest Point Dume neighbors include a slew of famous faces — fellow oil heiress Aileen Getty, Mike D of the Beastie Boys, Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, and Chris Martin among them.
