Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi List Oceanfront Contemporary
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Ellen DeGeneres and , two of Hollywood’s most prolific ultra high-end house flippers, have put their oceanfront estate in Carpinteria, Calif., up for sale at $24 million, a 29% increase above the $18.6 million the property mad couple paid for the one-plus acre spread not even two years ago. Long owned by prominent L.A. developer Robert F. Maguire III but seized in foreclosure and purchased by DeGeneres and de Rossi from the bank, the property is co-listed with Compass broker Suzanne Perkins and Riskin Partners Group at Village Properties .
A long, gated and eucalyptus-lined drive snakes past a lighted tennis court and multi-level guest house before it arrives at the main residence, a boxy, shingle-clad contemporary sitting on almost 80-feet of beach frontage with three and potentially four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in close to 7,000 square feet of airy, glass-walled living space. The 900-ish square foot, detached guesthouse provides another bedroom, at least one bathroom and a voluminous living room reminiscent of a modern art gallery with wet bar, fireplace and glass sliders to courtside viewing deck.
There are high ceilings, pale wood floors and vast expanses of windows that frame a cinematic sweep over the ocean and coastline in the open-plan living spaces that accommodate a variety of lounge areas, one with a minimalist fireplace, a spacious dining area and a sleek, stainless steel kitchen. Two main floor bedrooms occupy a wing of their own with ocean views, outdoor access and roomy en suite bathrooms while just inside the front door an en suite den with fireplace is easily converted to another bedroom and spills out to an enclosed courtyard with outdoor fireplace. The entire second floor is devoted entirely to a sprawling owners complex composed of an ocean-view bedroom with fireplace, a rubber-floored fitness room and an open-plan bathroom that flows into a huge, skylight topped walk-in closet and dressing room. There are two ocean-facing balconies, one in the bedroom and the other in the bathroom, another outside the dressing area that overlooks the motor court and a fourth, the largest, is set back from the wind with an outdoor fireplace. A broad deck outside the main living space has a sunset-view spa that can be covered by a thick cushion for beachside lounging and a gated path leads over a tumble of rocks to the beach and surf.
Two of the swanky beachside enclave’s other showbiz homeowners, both close enough for DeGeneres and de Rossi to send out an assistant to borrow an egg, include George Lucas , who controversially replaced a low-slung modernist pavilion with a hulking Cape Cod-style mansion, and Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis , who over the summer of 2017 dropped $10.1 million for a quaint, cottage-style oceanfront compound.
DeGeneres and de Rossi, who acquire, spruce up and sell trophy properties in some of southern California’s most expensive zip codes with notorious alacrity and, frequently, at a substantial profit, have this year alone spent close to $70 million on two new homes while at the same time trying to turn a tidy profit on a couple of others. Their Beverly Hills residence, a Hollywood historic Regency villa in the Trousdale Estates area they snapped up in September 2018 for $15 million, has been for sale for about three months at $17.95 million . And, last month they shelled out an astonishing $42.5 million for a grand Beverly Hills mansion sold by rockstar Adam Levine, who had bought it only about a year earlier for roughly $33.9 million from “Will & Grace” co-creator Max Mutchnick and entertainment attorney Erik Hyman. Earlier this year the obviously extraordinarily deep-pocketed DeGeneres-de Rossis dropped $27 million on a Bali-inspired contemporary compound in the mountains above Santa Barbara and another of their Santa Barbara holdings, a ten-acre spread in the foothills above Carpinteria that listing descriptions describe as a “hip Santa Barbara hideaway” with an “esoteric farmhouse and barn,” was set out for sale earlier this month at $8.95 million after they scooped it up less than a year ago for $6.7 million .
