Although property records show it was purchased through an inscrutable and oddly named blind trust, real-estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak says she’s one-thousand percent positive Ryan Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO of the post-bankruptcy but still struggling studio Relativity Media, is likely the new owner of a sprawling Los Angeles mansion — hidden inside the guarded gates of a discreet Brentwood enclave — that recently sold for $9.75 million.
Described in online marketing materials as a “stunning Hamptons Transitional estate” set on two lots that, combined, come to just under three-quarters of an acre, the nearly 9,100-square-foot house offers plenty of room for an expanding family. It has six bedrooms and six full bathrooms, as well as four half baths.
Decked out with a comprehensive home-automation system, the multi-winged manse has formal living and dining rooms plus an intimately proportioned den with a fireplace. There’s also a capacious great room with a full bar and state-of-the-art A/V equipment. The cook’s kitchen has all the high-end culinary bells and whistles money can buy, and an airy studio/gym has numerous skylights. Upstairs there’s a paneled study along with four guest/family bedrooms and a master suite with a fireplace and private terrace. Tree-shaded grounds offer a gated motor court at the front, and at the rear, expansive stone terraces surrounded by mature gardens, a swimming pool and a spa, a fire pit, a small putting green, and a Martha Stewart-worthy potting shed.
The film financier and producer, who has extensive property holdings on the Hawaiian island of Maui, is certainly no stranger to the property gossip columns. In the fall of 2009, he paid class-action mega-attorney Thomas Girardi and his “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” cast member wife, Erika Jayne, $7 million for a beachfront contemporary in Malibu that was sold in July 2015 for $8.75 million. Kavanaugh briefly owned an equestrian estate in a quiet Pacific Palisades canyon he picked up from Dennis Quaid in late 2011 for $9.5 million and sold less than a year later for $11.2 million. And in late 2013, he paid Howie Mandel $7 million for an East Coast-inspired estate on Malibu’s Point Dume that came up for sale earlier this year at not quite $10 million, and remains unsold with a substantially reduced asking price of just over $8.9 million.
listing photos: Hilton & Hyland
