Directly adjacent to LA’s fabulous Griffith Park is a historic residence known as the Van Griffith Estate, built in 1925 by the son of park founder Griffith Griffith (GriffX2, for short?). The Spanish-style compound was recently sold for a fat $7,750,000 in an all-cash deal. The buyer, interestingly enough, is a trust easily linked to one of LA’s biggest real estate ballers. Her name is Margaret “Megan” Ellison.
Obviously, 32-year-old Ms. Ellison is very rich. Unfathomably rich, in fact. As the only daughter of 73-year-old Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison, this openly lesbian gal stands to inherit a world-class fortune in the upcoming years (dear old dad is currently ranked as the globe’s 10th-richest individual and makes do with a net worth of $60 billion or so).
Anyone in the entertainment industry should already be familiar with our gurl’s name — despite her young age, she is already one of the most prolific and powerful producers in Hollywood. Her company Annapurna Pictures has produced dozens of films, and she has earned Academy Award nominations on four separate occasions — for Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), American Hustle (2013), and Phantom Thread (2017).
Despite her success in the industry, Ms. Ellison remains famously reclusive and deliberately mysterious. She has never once granted a formal press interview, nor does she pop up on the charity/social event gala circuit that ensnares so many rich folks in LA. But that’s okay. Everyone beats to their own percussion instrument, after all.
However, Ms. Ellison is certainly no shrinking violet on the real estate front — though still in her youth, she has bought and sold some of the most outrageous homes in LA. In that sense, she takes after her pops — it seems like nary a month goes by when our boy Larry is not buying yet another residence. By our count, he now owns something like $1 billion in real estate around the globe, making him one of the world’s biggest property ballers.
As for Megan, she once owned a sexy three-house compound in the Bird Streets area of the Hollywood Hills, but those homes were all sold off years ago for a total of about $47 million. She then owned a two-house compound on LA’s Mount Olympus, but both those structures have likewise since been dumped for about $40 million in total. In 2016, Ms. Ellison bought a ranch-style residence in the 90210 that she never moved into and sold after a few months of ownership (at a million dollar loss!). Nowadays she resides in a two-house compound in prime Beverly Hills (more on that a little later).
Today’s Los Feliz estate has a celebrity history: from July 2011 to September 2014, it was owned by musician Flea of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Our boy sold the house for exactly $6 million to a Romanian couple named Adrian Velicescu and Georgiana Tutunaru. It is these folks who are now flipping the property for nearly $2 million in profit to Ms. Ellison.
Not bad work if you can get it, right?
The Van Griffith estate is the very first structure outside the main entrance to Griffith Park and is (almost literally) a stone’s throw from the Greek Theatre, one of Yolanda’s personal favorite concert venues in LA. That means Ms. Ellison can easily walk to a performance after pre-gaming without having to worry about drivin’ home. But it also means, of course, that her street is absolutely swarmed with cars anytime there is an event hosted up yonder. Hey, ya win some and ya lose some.
As y’all might expect, the property is conscientiously private — the house is sited far back on the generous .78-acre lot, well above street level, and mostly hidden behind a dense forest of mature trees — pines, redwoods, and olive species. A gated driveway leads past the wee guest house to a rather charming entryway lined with colorful (and original) Spanish tiles.
Most of the main rooms — the living room, dining room, and library — have lustrous hardwood floors and big windows, from which a skyline view of the Downtown LA skyscrapers is clearly visible. Yolanda is not so fond of the kitchen, however. Though certainly spacious and featuring high-end appliances — check out that giant fridge! — we just can’t get behind those cheap-looking grey tile (?) floors, nor are we liking that pot rack.
Yolanda thinks there are 5 beds and 3.5 baths in the two-story main house. The master bath has been renovated to an unfortunate end, we feel — certainly a soaking tub and glass shower are nice, but all original Spanish charm has been scrubbed from this room.
The pool is rather inconveniently located all the down the long driveway and next to the guesthouse. It is also rather smaller than Yolanda would have expected for a nearly $8 million estate, but it does have a spa and is wondrously private.
As for the one-bed, one-bath guesthouse, Yolanda actually likes the look of this place more than the main residence. The bedroom has tile floors and French doors opening to a quiet courtyard fountain, there is a kitchen with original tile detailing, and an outdoor cabana has another lovely fireplace.
Yolanda hears that Ms. Ellison has her own private security team, so maybe they will be stationed in the guest quarters out by the front gate while she is in residence back in the main house. Lucky guards!
As for our gurl’s new neighbors, we already mentioned that Griffith Park and the Greek Theatre are right next door to this place. And the official ruler of Griffith Park — as everyone in LA knows — is P-22, arguably the world’s most famous (and most urban) mountain lion. This guy is a bonafide celebrity, with nearly 10,000 followers on Facebook.
Anyway, homeboy has ruled this area for many years. Ms. Ellison should not be surprised to see P-22 loungin’ in her backyard on a balmy summer’s eve. We hear he does not always respect boundaries — in fact, he has been caught on candid camera casually strolling’ through Los Feliz. Ooh, baby! You are one bad kitty cat. XOXO
Ms. Ellison currently resides in a $22.4 million Beverly Hills compound consisting of two separate residences. The Spanish-style residence was purchased in December 2016 for $15,500,000 from Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. The adjacent mid-century modern was then acquired the following March (2017) for about $6.9 million.
Yolanda really has no idea whether Ms. Ellison plans to decamp the 90210 for the hills of Los Feliz out east, but we expect that sort of speculation to be a moot point within a couple years. By then, all these houses will probably be sold off and Ms. Ellison will be living somewhere else entirely.
On and on she goes — and where she stops, nobody knows.
Listing agents: Sherri Rogers, Compass; Howard Lorey, Normand & Associates
Megan Ellison’s agent: Lisa Optican, Compass
