BUYERS: Christine Lahti and Thomas Schlamme
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $4,300,000
SIZE: 4,085 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Much decorated Tinseltown veterans Christine Lahti and Thomas Schlamme — he a writer/producer with nine Emmys and she a busy actress with two Golden Globes, an Emmy and an Oscar — paid $4.3 million (via trust) for a Santa Monica house that our research reveals was listed at $4.15 million and sold, per property records, by the heirs of late writer/producer/director Noel Black.
Listing details show the clapboard-sided beach bungalow, built in the mid-1980s, occupies a positively puny, .1-acre lot on a charming walk street just a few steps from the beach and a couple blocks from the shops and eateries that line Santa Monica’s Main Street. The existing residence stands threes stories and measures in at 4,085 square feet with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, four fireplaces — three inside and a fourth outside — and off-street parking for at least two cars, a hotly coveted feature in the tightly packed beach-side nabe where parking can be a blood sport.
There are wood floors in the main living spaces that include a casual formal living room, t.v. lounge, dining room with unexpectedly dramatic double-height ceiling and an updated kitchen with granite counter tops. A sculptural, curved staircase leads from the dining room to the second floor where there’s a family room, per listing details, and the third floor is accessed by a downright vertiginous, open-tread floating staircase over the dining room.
The children will note the beaver busy and typically meticulously informed real estate gossips at the Los Angeles Times reported last week the house in question was purchased by another couple of Hollywood royals, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. However, a careful parse of the property records suggest and good ol’ real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak says she’s 1,000-percent positive the buyers were Miz Lahti and Mister Schlamme who — she also swears — leased the house for quite some time before they opted to buy it. (Online resources show the house was last listed for least on the open market over the summer of 2012 at a rate of $12,000 per month.)
Almost three years ago, in April 2012, Miz Lahti and Mister Schlamme sold a 6,718-square-foot residence in a plum pocket of Brentwood — it’s just around the corner for Marcy Carsey’s in-town compound — for $6,384,000.
Listing photos: John Aaroe Group
