Hillary Clinton famously coined the term “It takes a village to raise a child,” and though real estate transactions are a matter of public record, it also sometimes takes a village of intrepid informants to sort out ownership of properties purchased through inscrutable blind trusts and mysterious corporate concerns. Such was the case for a multi-residence spread perched on a prime bluff above Malibu’s Paradise Point that was covertly sold in late March for $44 million to a vaguely named LLC with a Silicon Valley address. With the dogged assistance of Malibu Ken, Lucy Spillerguts, Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air and good ol’ Yolanda Yakketyyak, we’ve uncovered a trove of circumstantial yet convincing evidence that links the property to Laurene Powell Jobs, the savvy Palo Alto-based businesswoman and philanthropist widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
The three-acre, two-parcel property in question was previously sold in 2010 for $11.5 million to investment banker-turned-aspiring politician-turned-local news media entrepreneur Jack Ryan, who might be best known as the guy who ran against Barack Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois, but dropped out after unsealed divorce documents from his first marriage to actress Jeri Ryan revealed embarrassing allegations of his sexual proclivities. Ryan and his second wife, Amanda, razed the main residence to make way for a much larger Colonial-style mansion. They added a pool house and initiated renovations to the two guest cottages that sit on the sand at the bottom of the bluff. Alas, the Ryans opted not to complete the property’s extensive overhaul, and instead quietly made the property available through REX, a relatively little-known digital marketplace for residential real estate. Details are slim, but online marketing materials indicate the compound’s various residences, as planned and when complete, will comprise a dozen bedrooms and as many bathrooms in approximately 13,000-square-feet.
listing photos: REX
