Ellen DeGeneres Makes Off-Market Sale in Montecito (EXCLUSIVE)
Images of Ellen DeGeneres’s Flipped House in Montecito
By Mark David
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LOS ANGELES (Variety) – Ellen DeGeneres and made an $11 million off-market deal to sell Rancho San Leandro, the smaller of their two multi-million dollar estates in the fire and mud slide ravaged but still tony and extravagantly pricey seaside community of Montecito, Calif., for $11 million.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont3The couple, two of Hollywood’s most prolific buyers and sellers of high-end residential real estate, earned themselves an impressively hefty profit on the property they purchased only about eight months ago for $7.195 million and plugged in real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketeyyak swears the new owner is Tinder founder and chairman Sean Rad.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont2The idyllic, oak and eucalyptus dotted equestrian compound, which butts up against Oprah Winfrey’s vast and manicured 40-acre estate she calls The Promised Land, spans almost six ocean- and mountain-view acres and is anchored by an historical adobe hacienda that dates to the middle 1800s with 2,751-square-feet of carefully restored and conscientiously updated interior space.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont1In addition to a downright spectacular 50-foot-long combination living and dining room with matching fireplaces at either end and a soaring trestle and beam vaulted ceiling, the modestly proportioned main residence includes a sunny kitchen and adjoining informal dining area that opens to a deep, wrap-around veranda, a basement level games room or storage space and a master suite with fireplace, small walk-in closet and spacious bathroom.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont12A giant cobblestone-paved courtyard arranged around a central fountain separates the low-slung main residence from a trio of structures linked by a wide covered porch.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont11One structure houses a three-car garage and another includes a library with a Santa Barbara stone fireplace plus a half bathroom and a gym.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont10The third and largest structure is a self-contained two-story guesthouse of 3,635-square-feet with three bedrooms — the two upstairs are en suite with good-sized walk-in closets — and three bathrooms plus a complete kitchen and a step-down living room with an imposing fireplace flanked by French doors that open to a commodious covered dining and lounging patio with outdoor fireplace and over-the-treetops ocean view.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont9The property additionally offers a four-stall horse barn with tack room beneath a purple-flowered jacaranda tree and the stable sits next to a fenced riding arena and pasture.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont8It’s unclear what improvements, if any, DeGeneres and de Rossi made during their brief ownership but at the time of their purchase the property did not have a swimming pool or a tennis court.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont7The DeGeneres-de Rossis, who last year shelled out $18.6 million for a striking ocean front contemporary compound on prestigious Padaro Lane in nearby Carpinteria, continue to own a much bigger estate in Montecito, an almost 17-acre spread they acquired in two 2013 transactions that totaled $28.8 million.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont6Originally designed by Michigan architect Wallace Frost and later owned by internationally acclaimed designer John Saladino , the more than 10,000-plus-square-foot stone-built Tuscan-style villa, surrounded by a couple of outbuildings that include a poolside entertainment pavilion, came up for sale on the open market in March 2017 for $45 million .
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont5The price was chopped to $39.5 million in late 2017 before the property was taken off the open market shortly after the first of this year.
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-MORE/NEWS:DeGeneres_Rad_Mont4For now, the famously peripatetic L.A.-based couple’s primary residence remains a nearly 5,300-square-foot mid-century bungalow sequestered behind gates and down a long driveway on a prime street in Beverly Hills they scooped up in late 2015 for $15.995 million. (There are wholly unsubstantiated rumors afoot, first relayed by well-connected tattletale Kenny Kissentell, the property mad pair may be interested in acquiring a neighboring property that, so the Platinum Triangle real estate scuttlebutt goes, has become available off-market with an asking price of around $20 million.)
VARIETY-ENTERTAINMENT-DIRT/REAL-ESTALKER:Variety Entertainment Photo ServiceAs for Rad, reportedly worth about a billion dollars based on a $3 billion evaluation of Tinder in late 2017, in 2016 he traded a 5,300-square-foot penthouse atop a luxury high-rise along L.A.’s Wilshire Corridor — it was sold for $7.75 million — for a sophisticated, vine-encrusted European villa of just over 5,000-square-feet set behind gates just above the ever-chic Sunset Strip for which he paid a high-powered 20th Century Fox Film executive $7.65 million .
listing photos: Sotheby’s International Realty