SELLERS: Brad and Cassandra Grey
BUYER: Sam Nazarian
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $25 million
SIZE: 10,616 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: It seems that entertainment industry power player Brad Grey and his sartorially stylish wife, Cassandra Huysentruyt Grey, are on a bit of a real estate tear the last couple of months. The couple hoisted their spacious and sophisticated New York City pied-a-terre at the legendary Carlyle on the open market in April with an asking price of $22.5 million and now we hear the couple has quietly unloaded their tastefully lavish Colonial-style mansion in a particularly pricey and lusted after pocket of Bel Air for, according to real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak. Price is pegged at $25 million. A transfer of ownership has yet to pop up in any of the property record databases we peeped and poked around but good ol’ Yolanda, who provided some circumstantial social media evidence, swears on a thousand baby elephants the new owner of the stately estate is famously flashy and currently embattled hospitality industry mogul Sam Nazarian.
Property records and various reports from the time show the gated and extra-ordinarily high-hedged corner property was purchased by Mister Grey — currently the chairman and CEO of Paramount and Brad Pitt’s partner at the Plan B production company — in 2009 for $22 million and, as some of the children may recall, was put up for sale on the open market in 2013 with an asking price of $27.5 million. The property was removed from the open market in June of 2014 but, so the scuttlebutt goes, remained available as an pocket listing if you knew the right high-powered Platinum Triangle real estate broker to call.
Digital marketing materials from the time the Grey estate was listed on the open market show the 10,616-square-foot residence sits on just over 1.1 carefully and verdantly landscaped acres with a total of five bedrooms and six full and two half bathrooms. A double height center hall entry with shimmery silver walls and a gracefully curved staircase leads to a reception foyer that opens through French doors to a columned loggia. An elegantly proportioned formal living room has a bowed window and a fireplace and does double duty as a screening room with discretely integrated professional grade equipment. An adjacent, fully-paneled library/gentlemen’s den has a fireplace, built-in book cases, a cozy window seat and a walk-in wet bar while the formal dining room, which easily accommodates a dozen diners, has a china and linen storage closet and links to the kitchen and family quarters through a butler’s pantry. The marble-countered center island kitchen will easily accommodate two private chefs and opens one on side to an octagonal breakfast room and on another to a family room with fireplace and backyard access through French doors. A two-story service wing behind the kitchen includes a home office, mudroom, half bathroom, laundry room and, up a secondary staircase above the attached three-car garage, a generously sized staff bedroom with walk-in closet and private bathroom. (It appears to this property gossip the staff room was kitted out as a mirror-walled Pilates studio.) Three en suite guest/family bedrooms on the upper floor each have ample walk walk-in closets and dressing areas and share a common living room that opens through French doors to a small terrace that overlooks the backyard and — as best as we can tell — the Greys lined with floor to ceiling mirrors and filled with a whole bunch of exercise equipment. In a separate wing the substantial master suite also benefits from a private terrace that also overlooks the backyard along with his and her bathrooms, walk-in closets and dressing areas. The loggia and terrace that runs along the rear of the mansion gives way to a broad sweep of liberally watered lawn, boxwood-lined gardens and a dark-bottom swimming pool with inset spa. The grounds also include a parking lot sized motor court at the front of the house and an also parking lot sized secondary motor court beyond the side-facing three-car garage.
We’re not sure where Mister and Missus Grey will decide to settle permanently but there’s a pretty good chance they’ll eventually move in to the currently under construction mansion on a prime, 2.15-acre Holmby Hills parcel that was acquired in November 2010 for $18.5 million. Avid Platinum Triangle real estate watchers will recall the Holmby Hills property was once owned by Frank Sinatra but, after the Greys were married on the estate in 2011, the existing Spanish hacienda-style residence was razed to make way for something much more grand.
Mister Nazarian, who stepped down from running his own company, SBE Entertainment, late last year after an investigation by the Nevada Gaming Commission turned up evidence of recent cocaine use and approximately $3 million in extortion payments to nefarious characters who included Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, was born in Tehran and bred in Beverly Hills. (His father co-founded the Qualcomm telecommunications juggernaut.) Over the years the ambitious and ever-more wealthy entrepreneur has owned a number of multi-million dollar homes in Los Angeles including one in a gated Beverly Hills (Post Office) enclave he bought in 2004 from Jennifer Lopez and sold not quite two years later for $13.25 million to its current owners, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. Three or so years ago Mister Nazarian decamped Los Angeles for Las Vegas where, in September 2012, he shelled out $8.35 million for a 14,000-square-foot mansion in a swanky gated community. As it turns out and perhaps not entirely surprisingly, Mister Nazarian’s Las Vegas mansion is currently listed on the open market with an asking price of $17.5 million.
Listing photos: Westside Estate Agency (via Zillow)
