SELLER: Kevin Spacey
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $11,000,000
SIZE: 6,595 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Marcel Mouchard and Caren Cracklebush, two trusted and plugged in property snitches, both swear that “House of Cards” star and 2017 Tony Awards host Kevin Spacey made an off-market deal to sell his longtime home in Los Angeles for somewhere right around $11 million. The 1.1-acre estate, at the western edge of the Los Feliz area, was not available on the open market but was first shopped around as a whisper listing back in mid-2015 with an asking price then rumored to be around $15 million. Property records do not yet reflect a transfer of ownership but both Mr. Mouchard and Ms. Cracklebush pegged the new owners as veteran studio executive Donna Langley, high-powered chairman of Universal Pictures, and Ramin Shamshiri, co-founder of the acclaimed multi-disciplinary design firm Commune who, along with his sister, Pamela Shamshiri, co-founded Studio Shamshiri in early 2016.
Property records and other online resources show the Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe winning actor, nominated for ten Emmy’s but yet to take one home, purchased the stately spread in late 1997 for $2.135 million and, though the figures may not be entirely accurate, tax records show the 1920s red brick and faux-timbered English Tudor measures in at 6,595-square-feet with five bedrooms and four bathrooms. Mr. Mouchard revealed the residence, proudly perched high on a gated knoll with an over-the-treetops city view, retains a fair amount of attractive original architectural detailing, especially in the entrance hall and formal living room, but that much of the house “needs to be seriously re-thought and re-worked.” The rear of the angled and double-turreted residence opens to a series of terraces that overlook tree-ringed flat lawns and there’s a fetching oval swimming pool somewhat unusually and certainly not ideally located on the front side of the house where it is separated from the parking lot-sized brick-paved motor court by little more than a tall hedge.
Mister Spacey, who once maintained a duplex penthouse in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood that was first listed in 2007 at almost $5 million but didn’t sell until early 2010 for $3.5 million, also once owned the much more contemporary, vaguely Greek Revival residence next door that he picked up in March 2001 for $1.9 million and sold in May 2006 for $2.535 million. As for the Langley-Shamshiris, in addition to a not-quite 3.5-acre getaway in Ojai, CA, the exceptionally stylish couple own a carefully restored and updated 1920s Mediterranean in the affluent foothills of Los Feliz that they bought in 2005 and that property records show was owned in the 1990s by “Real Love” singer Jody Watley and later by “Party of Five” writer/producer P.K. Simonds.
aerial image: Google
