Ryan Kavanaugh seeks a deep-pocketed buyer to lighten his heavy-duty real estate portfolio with the $25 million sale of a brand-new and never-occupied Nantucket-inspired Pacific Palisades, Calif., mansion perched on a high promontory with panoramic views that sweep over a bird’s-eye-like swathe of mountains, ocean and coastline. The founder and former CEO of twice-bankrupt Relativity Media, now a principal of the recently formed film finance operation Proxima Media, has owned the property since 2008 when he bought it through a corporate concern for $10.55 million from football legend Joe Namath’s ex-wife Tatiana Namath. Sitting on just over three-quarters of an acre near the end of a serpentine street where it backs up to and overlooks protected lands in the rugged mountains above Will Rogers State Beach, the recently completed and casually grand three-story mansion has seven bedrooms and eight full and three half bathrooms in close to 10,500 square feet.
A small front porch elevated above the gated driveway opens to a double-height entrance hall and an ample pair of adjacent living rooms divided by a double-sided fireplace. The larger of the two living rooms is three steps lower than the other and both have full-height French doors that frame sunset views over the ocean, and facilitate an easy flow to outdoor living and entertaining spaces. Arranged around a boxcar-sized island, the marble-countered kitchen mixes relaxed farmhouse-style elements such as a porcelain apron sink with a laundry list of premium-quality culinary accoutrement and the voluminous, adjoining combination dining and family room features a high vaulted ceiling and extraordinarily tall French doors on either side of a fireplace.
En suite guest and family bedrooms are comfortably spacious, and the sprawling master suite is replete with a fireplace, sitting area, ocean-view balcony, dual bathrooms and at least one boutique-style dressing room lined in floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted wardrobes. An extensive subterranean leisure level contains a game room with wet bar and 960-bottle wine cellar, along with a small gym and a 10-seat theater with wide-screen projection system. In the backyard, a pavilion that stands between an outdoor kitchen and dark-bottom infinity edge swimming pool incorporates an open-air loggia along with a convenient pool bath while a huge deck juts out over the hillside with a frameless glass railing that ensures uninterrupted views.
Kavanaugh and his third wife, former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Jessica Roffey, continue to own another Nantucket-style spread on Malibu’s Point Dume he picked up in late 2013 for $7 million from game-show host Howie Mandel. After it was briefly listed in 2016 with an asking price of $9.975 million that quickly tumbled to $8.925 million before it was taken off the market, the gated estate is now available for an eye-catching $8,888,888 price tag after popping up for sale almost a year ago at $10.68 million. The once high-flying and famously profligate financier/producer, who in his heyday commuted into town from Malibu by helicopter, additionally owns three condos in the same complex in downtown Santa Monica that he acquired in three separate transactions between the summer of 2015 and early 2016 for a total outlay of $9.3 million. But in late 2017, in the legally beleaguered aftermath of Relativity’s implosion, he took a bank-account-draining $450,000 loss on the $9.3 million sale of a 9,000-plus square foot mansion in a guard-gated enclave in the tony Brentwood area of Los Angeles he’d bought only about a year earlier for $9.75 million.
The Pacific Palisades property is represented by Kavanaugh’s mother, Leslie Kavanaugh at Rodeo Realty.
