BUYER: Joel Kinnaman
LOCATION: Venice, CA
PRICE: $3,749,000
SIZE: 3,343 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: An early morning digital communiqué from ever-vigilant real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak let us know that lantern-jawed and usually scruffy-chinned Swedish-born actor Joel Kinnaman, the comely co-star of the not longer in production cable crime series “The Killing,” surreptitiously shelled out $3,749,000 for a boxy contemporary in the once and arguably still a bit gritty but rapidly gentrifying and increasingly spendy beachside community of Venice. Listing details show the two-story residence, technically closer to Marina Del Rey than Venice’s über-trendy, hipster-thronged Abbot Kinney shopping and dining district, was built just a few years ago with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 3,343 square feet of clean-lined and decorative molding-free interior space.
A commercial-style aluminum framed glass door opens into a proper foyer that links to a wood-floored and L-shaped open-concept living/dining/kitchen space that includes a lounge area with a gas fireplace and an expanse of glass sliders that slip into the walls when open and effectively covert the room to a sea breeze licked covered porch. The adjoining kitchen has a marble-topped doublewide island with integrated snack bar and the wide doorway into the dining area is flanked by hopefully non-structural and heavily distressed fluted columns that are, as far as we’re concerned, uncomfortably incongruous to the residence’s decidedly modern-minded architecture.
Two guest/family bedrooms on the upper floor — one has an en suite bathroom while the other makes exclusive use of a hall bathroom — are joined on the second floor by a convenient laundry room along with the long and somewhat thin master bedroom that is plenty lengthy enough to accommodate a sizable sitting area in front of the television-surmounted gas fireplace. The master suite also provides a custom fitted and windowed walk-in closet as well as a marble-accented bathroom with radiant heated floors, jetted garden tub, windowed shower space lined with white subway tiles, and a separate sauna.
Residential lots in Venice are notoriously tight — this one comes in at a particularly compact 4,301 square feet per listing details — so outdoor living space tends to be somewhat limited in the tightly packed community. There’s a gated and high-hedged front garden with entertainment deck off the ground floor living room, a roof terrace with freestanding hot tub and built-in grilling station, and, at the rear of the property, an attached three-car garage with additional off-street parking for up to four more cars.
This is not the first home in Los Angeles purchased by the 36-year-old Swede who starred in the 2014 reboot of “RoboCop,” a domestic dud at the box office but still a global hit, and will appear in the celeb-studded comic book adaption “Suicide Squad” to be released later this year. Just over 1.5 years ago, via the same trust used to acquire the Venice property, he spent $2.45 million for what this property gossip then described as “a revamped, 1970s mock-Med abode high in the hills above Sunset Strip.”
The Venice property was represented by The Altman Brothers, Matt and Josh, at Douglas Elliman.
