Katy Perry Snags Buyer for One of Two Hollywood Hills Homes
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – After almost 2.5 years on and off the market at a series of declining prices, Katy Perry has at long last landed a buyer for the larger of her two side-by-side former homes at the top of Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills that first popped up on the open market in the fall of 2017 at $9.45 million and was last priced at $8.95 million. Unconfirmed word on the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine is the new owner is a well-known restaurateur and bon vivant.
The international pop superstar, also a judge on “American Idol” and consistently one of the highest paid female musicians on the planet who hauled in an estimated $83 million between June 2017 and July 2018, according to the celebrity bean counters at Forbes , acquired the almost 2.5-acre spread in April 2013 for $8.2 million from oil heiress and philanthropist Aileen Getty. (Perry also owns the smaller, far more contemporary residence next door she also bought from Getty in a separate but concurrent April 2013 transaction for $3 million; It’s unclear if that property is being sold as part of the deal.)
Although indisputably well equipped for a casually luxurious indoor/outdoor lifestyle the heavily fortified hillside property is a somewhat odd choice for a security conscious celeb like Perry because it shares a long, sinuous border with an often very busy public walking trail. There are four bedrooms and four full and two half bathrooms spread throughout the various structures that together measure about 7,500 square feet and include a small guard-house, a Spanish-style main residence, a semi-detached two-story guesthouse with a limousine-length garage and huge fitness pavilion.
The main house spills out to a stone-paved, plaza-like courtyard with a swimming pool and spa plus a poolside cabana with convenient half bathroom. There’s also an outdoor pizza oven and a loggia with an outdoor fireplace. Pathways lined with citrus trees and river rock retaining walls zigzag down the elaborately terraced hillside below the house and lead to serene meditation gardens and an outdoor amphitheater.
Long engaged in an expensive, complicated and ongoing battle to buy the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent in Los Feliz, an eight-acre hilltop complex she plans to convert to a palatial private family compound, Perry some time ago decamped her home atop Runyon Canyon for a substantially more secluded spread tucked into a famously celebrity favored enclave in the upper reaches of Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills. In the spring of 2017 she paid almost $18 million for a five-bedroom villa secreted down a long driveway on more than an acre that butts up against protected lands and in late 2018 shelled out almost $7.5 million for a second home in the neighborhood. A few of the many other showbiz folks who maintain homes in the swank enclave include Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, Adele, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lawrence.
listing photos: Douglas Elliman
UPDATE (03-04-19): The deal went down for a mite more than $9.4 million – well above the last asking price and nearly the amount of the original asking price — and, as was alleged by real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak , the buyer is indeed a renown restaurateur: Michael Chow, founder of the Mr. Chow franchise, and his substantially younger new wife Vanessa Rano.
