People, People Who Sell Houses . . .
Barbra Streisand, whose New Year’s Eve concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas already has generated more ticket sales than any other single event in Ticketmaster’s history, has sold her Holmby Hills home of 20 years for $4.9 million.
The five-bedroom 9,500-square-foot house, which Streisand had on and off the market for a couple of years, was purchased by Les and Lynn Bider. He is chairman and chief executive of Warner/Chappell, a giant in the music publishing business.
Built in 1927, the Mediterranean-style home, on slightly more than two acres, has a pool as well as parking for 10 cars.
The Oscar-winning actress, 57, and her husband, actor James Brolin, 58, maintain their main residence in Malibu, where they were married in July. Streisand created the compound from three existing Malibu houses, which she bought for a total of about $12.5 million in 1995.
The Holmby Hills home was originally listed in 1997 at $7.5 million.
Joe Babajian and Mindy Williamson of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills, had the most recent listing, and Sally Forster Jones, of the same office, represented the buyers.
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The Guenoc and Langtry Estate Vineyards & Winery, a 21,000-acre property with a Victorian house built during the 1880s for British actress Lillie Langtry, has been listed at $135 million.
The property, in the Guenoc Valley about 90 miles north of San Francisco, is owned by the Magoon family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty and Chinese nobility. The Magoons traded a 23-acre parcel in Hawaii for the California land in 1963.
Langtry, who owned 4,200 of the acres from 1888 to 1906, grew grapes from which she made wine, bottled with her likeness on the label. She was a renowned beauty who sat for such well-known painters as James Whistler.
By the time the Magoons acquired the property, the vineyards were being used for ranching and hunting, but in the late ‘70s, Orville Magoon, a coastal engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, started to grow grapes there again. The winery was built in 1981, and soon Magoon, now 70, retired from full-time engineering to focus on his family’s holdings.
Today the main vineyards, which total 400 acres, produce about 145,000 cases of wine a year as Langtry and Guenoc, recognizable by the actress’ image on the label. The home she built has been restored and furnished with antiques. Nearby are a banquet hall and a lodge with a kitchen and a pool.
The property is listed with Zackary Wright at Sotheby’s in Corona del Mar and Gary Palmer and Kristin Friese at Morgan Stanley Realty Inc. in San Francisco.
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“The Full Monty” co-producer Paul Bucknor has moved into a Los Feliz home that he purchased in the $600,000 range.
Bucknor, 34, was born in Jamaica but was raised in Coventry. He decided to move from England to the United States after “The Full Monty” (1997) won an Academy Award nomination for best picture.
He bought a 2,200-square-foot house with a guest cottage. Built in 1979, the home has room for a pool, which Bucknor plans to install.
Charles Laulette of Fred Sands Realtors, Los Feliz, represented Bucknor in his home purchase.
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A French chateau in Beverly Hills, owned since 1996 by a family from the Far East, has come on the market at $8.9 million.
The house was previously owned by a Russian banker who owned a Rolls-Royce dealership in Moscow. He bought the house for about $11.5 million in a 1993 bankruptcy auction. The builder had lost the property through foreclosure.
The 35,000-square-foot house has a glass floor in the dining room looking down at an indoor pool, a bowling alley, gym, tennis court, ballroom, elevator, 4,000-square-foot master suite, five other bedrooms, three guest apartments, a 50-foot-high entry and a 30-foot-tall front door.
The home, on two acres, was completed in 1990 but never has been occupied.
Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates has the listing.
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Actor Joe Sirola, whose voice-overs are familiar on commercials for Wendy’s and Hertz, has donated his 40-acre ranch to the Yucca Valley Foundation, which plans to sell the property and give the funds to the needy. Sirola’s property, in the Joshua Tree area, was appraised at $327,000.
Sirola, who co-stars in Delaware Pictures’ upcoming movie “Pretty Boy” with Tyrone Power Jr., played Gino Soleito in the TV series “The City” (1995-97), Judge Beltratti on “Civil Wars” (1991-92) and Sal Lupo in “Wolf” (1989-90).
He has residences in Los Angeles and New York.
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Songwriter Joseph Caccamise and his wife, Aida, have sold their two-bedroom Malibu beach house for about $800,000 and are building a larger home nearby.
“I want to expand my in-house studio,” the composer said. The couple also has a home in New York.
Besides providing music for network and cable TV, Caccamise recently finished working on two albums due out this summer and is working on projects with Herbie Hancock and the band Trans-X, he said.
The Caccamises were represented in their home sale by Benik Hovsepian of Regal Properties in Beverly Hills.
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Did you miss Thursday’s Hot Property column in Southern California Living? Want to see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions? Visit http://161.35.110.226/hotproperty on the Internet for more Hot Properties.
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