SELLER: Rachel Hunter
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $4,999,999
SIZE: (approx.) 5,000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: The Hollywood Hills home of New Zealand-born veteran model, occasional actress and, currently, television host Rachel Hunter has once again come up for sale, this time with an asking price of $4,999,999. The property is alternatively available as a rental at $20,000 per month. Property records and other online resources indicate the “Dancing With the Stars” alum, currently the host of “Rachel Hunter’s Tour of Beauty” on New Zealand’s TV One Network, a global trek to suss out secrets and varying definitions of beauty around the world, purchased the property in April 2004 for $2.425 million.
This is not, the first time the second ex-wife of rock star Rod Stewart has attempted to unload her just-above-the-Sunset-Strip home that’s described in marketing materials as a “Charming updated 1930s English country home” and that this property gossip might slightly less benevolently characterize as a faux-timbered pseudo-Tudor. In late 2006 Miz Hunter asked $3.6 million for the approximately 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom and 3.5-bathroom residence. The price dropped precipitously to $2.995 million before it was taken off the market in August 2007 only to be briefly re-listed the following February at $3.25 million.
The comfortably proportioned living room, done up in a Dalai-Lama-does-lumpy-bumpy-Shabby-Chic sort of manner, features hardwood floors and a beamed ceiling as well as a leaded glass bay window and an over-sized arched fireplace. The separate dining room, where listing photographs show a clumsy stack of firewood piled up in one corner, has a lovely coved ceiling detail, a bank of French doors, a cute if too-dainty crystal chandelier, and a second fireplace that, like the one in the living room, is overhung by a flat-screen television. The eat-in kitchen, described in official property descriptions as “Newer,” has a castle-esque stone-tiled floor, slab marble counter tops on lightly distressed bone-colored cabinetry, and a shimmering, celadon-colored tiled backsplash behind the stainless steel commercial-style range. A finished basement level is suitable for a “media or games room,” per listing descriptions, while the master suite occupies a prime perch on the upper level where it opens through French doors to a private porch with glittery, tree-framed city view. There’s also more than one walk-in closet plus a spacious bathroom with glass-fronted steam shower and a ship-shaped crystal chandelier hung from a voluminous vaulted and exposed beam ceiling. The backyard, a multi-level affair with a combination of red brick and grey flagstone terracing, is surrounded by a cornucopia of slightly if not entirely unpleasantly unkempt foliage and provides cozy lounging and dining spaces plus a swimming pool and spa.
Miz Hunter previously owned a number of luxury homes in the Los Angeles area. They include a wood-shingled Nantucket-style cottage in Hermosa Beach she bought in 2007 with her former fiancée, professional ice hockey player Jarret Stoll — he still owns the house per property records, as well as a nearly 5,900-square-foot Mediterranean in Sherman Oaks she sold in 2004 for $2.55 million and, as it turns out, was just sold again last month by CAA über-agent Jeremy Plager and comedy writer and actress Andrea Savage for $2,949,500.
Listing photos: Coldwell Banker
