Loading

ENTERTAINMENT

Are Ellen and Portia Looking to Sell in Beverly Hills?

By Mark David

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Unconfirmed word is starting to slip down the Platinum Triangle property gossip grapevine that Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi may be looking to sell their recently purchased estate in Beverly Hills. The couple, two of Tinseltown’s most prolific buyers and sellers of high-end real estate, purchased the stately English Tudor manor house only about a year ago for a whopping $42.5 million , according to tax records, from rock star Adam Levine and model Behati Prinsloo. And, we now hear from an always well-informed tattletale that the property mad pair is willing to discreetly show the heavily fortified estate to pre-qualified buyers unbothered by a sky-high asking price alleged to be $58 million.

The more than 10,000-square foot mansion, behind gates on a landscaped acre in a posh and particularly coveted neighborhood near the eastern border of Beverly Hills, was purchased by Levine and Prinsloo in a clandestine off-market deal in March 2018 for $33.9 million. The sellers were “Will & Grace” co-creator Max Mutchnick and entertainment attorney Erik Hyman, who’d bought the A-lister spread a decade earlier for almost $17 million from tennis great Pete Sampras and actor Bridgette Wilson.

Listing details from when Levine and Prinsloo flipped the estate back on the market in April 2019 at $47.5 million show the fiv-bedroom behemoth has a grand, double-height foyer, a 50-foot-long living room and a commodious dining room with a lavish bar area. There’s also a gourmet kitchen that opens to a cozy family room, plus a second, all-stainless steel catering kitchen as well as an outdoor kitchen complete with pizza oven. Other notable luxuries include a gym, a plush screening room and a one-bed/one-bath guesthouse with a huge private patio. The park-like grounds offer vast stone terraces and rolling, tree-dotted lawns, an oval-shaped swimming pool and a lighted tennis court with viewing pavilion.

DeGeneres, who has battled a tidal wave of negative press over the last few weeks due to allegations by former staffers of not being nearly as nice as her super-friendly public persona, has bought and sold literally dozens of extravagantly expensive and often architecturally significant homes in the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara areas. To wit: In 2003, before she and de Rossi coupled up, the daytime chat show host bought a rambling home along a famously celeb-lined street in the Hollywood Hills — the seller was, interestingly enough, Max Mutchnick — that she sold in 2006 to Will Ferrell; In 2007 they shelled out $29 million for a sprawling Beverly Hills compound — the seller was, once again, Max Mutchnick and his then soon-to-be husband Erik Hyman — that they sold in 2012 for $36.5 million to Ryan Seacrest; In 2011 they paid Brad Pitt $11 million for a bluff-top ultra-modern home in Malibu that they sold just six months later for $12 million; And, in the fall of 2017 they splashed out $18.6 million for a striking contemporary beachfront compound in Carpinteria they sold last year (2019) in an all-cash deal valued at $23 million to cosmetics mogul Jamie Kern Lima.

The couple’s current portfolio includes a seven-plus-acre Bali-inspired compound in Montecito they scooped up in early 2019 for $27 million — it’s where they’ve quarantined during the pandemic — and earlier this year they coughed up $3.6 million for a picturesque Montecito property they quickly gussied up and now have back up for sale at $6.9 million .

tagreuters.com2020binary_MT1VRTP0KF231D-FILEDIMAGE

MOST POPULAR