SELLER: Ashley Benson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,695,000
SIZE: 3,085 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: “Pretty Little Liars” bombshell Ashley Benson is giving it another real estate go and re-listed her celeb-pedigreed 1930s French Normandy-style cottage just above L.A.’s ever-bustling and perennially chic Sunset Strip with a what current marketing materials call a “Priced to sell” asking price of $2.695 million. The actress, who did a 45-episode stint on the daytime soap story “Days of Our Lives” before she landed her plummy part on “Pretty Little Liars,” which will air its seventh and final season this year, purchased the 3,085-square-foot house in October 2012 for $2.2 million. Previous owners of the relatively modest if hardly inexpensive and glamorously outfitted three-bedroom and 3.5-bathroom residence include, in the early 2000s, pop singer Kylie Minogue and, in the mid-2000s, musician Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. Miss Benson, who will appear on the big screen with Mary-Louise Parker and Chris Noth in the not-yet-released coming-of-age comedy “Chronically Metropolitan,” originally put the property up for sale in early 2016 at $2.995 million. The price later dropped to $2.795 million and was briefly available in the fall of 2016 as a short-term luxury lease at a rate of $15,000 per month before it disappeared from the open market.
A secured gate alongside a two-car garage opens to a walled and tree-shaded courtyard where a red brick path leads to a charming turreted entry. In addition to a large formal dining room with coffered ceiling and bookshelf-flanked fireplace, the home’s several living and entertaining spaces include: a window-lined lounge with wall-mounted flat-screen television; a step down den with fireplace and freestanding dry bar; and a slender, fully-paneled library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The crisply rendered all-white kitchen sports thick slab marble counter tops, a center island with cantilevered snack counter, top-end stainless steel appliances and an adjoining dining space. A small guest/family bedroom located up a slender private staircase has an exposed beam ceiling and French doors that open to a Juliet balcony that overlooks the front courtyard while the main staircase leads a second guest/family bedroom that’s furnished as a home office along with a master suite that has French doors to a city-view deck, ample closet space, and a remodeled bathroom. The backyard, privatized with towering backs of hedges, offers extensive stone terraces, a small, dark-bottom swimming pool and an elevated spa backed by a fence whimsically painted in pink and white vertical stripes.
The “Spring Breakers” actress, who for years has had an on again/off again romance with Justin Beiber’s former — ahem — “swagger coach” Ryan Good, may only be 27 but she is certainly no stranger to the celebrity property gossip columns. In the fall of 2015 she splashed out $4.15 million for a 6,131-square-foot, ersatz Mediterranean villa in the Franklin Canyon area of Beverly Hills that she licketty-split flipped back on the market just two months later at $4.395 million and sold, per sales records, in May of 2016 when it went for $3,812,000, a hair curling $338,000 loss not counting carrying costs, improvements, or real estate fees.
Listing photos: Compass
