Mel B Price-Chops Sunset Strip Contemporary
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Melanie ‘Mel B’ Brown, forever known around the globe as Scary Spice and since 2013 a judge on “America’s Got Talent,” can’t seem to catch a real estate break and, after 1.5 no-doubt frustrating years on the market at ever-lower asking prices, the international pop superstar turned veteran televised talent show judge has hacked another $600,000 off the asking price of her sleekly appointed home above L.A.’s Sunset Strip, bringing it down to $5.9 million.
Though the new asking price is an eye-catching 33% less than the original and in-hindsight exceedingly ambitious asking price of $8.995 million , it’s still a substantial amount above the just over $4.34 million the former Spice Girl and her now ex-husband, Stephen Belafonte, paid for the property in 2014.
Perched on a steep slope near the tony border between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, the approximately 6,000-square-foot contemporary, also available as a luxury rental at $40,000 per month, has three to four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms over four floors.
A long, custom-lit open-tread stairway makes for a properly theatrical if, at least for the less physically fit, quadriceps straining procession down from the top-floor entrance gallery to a spacious and voluminously high-ceilinged living room that features bone-colored hardwood floors and glass sliders that open to a small terrace with cross-canyon view.
A fireplace surrounded in marble and surmounted by a flat-screen TV is set into a smooth-paneled wall with built-in shelves that hold a variety of Brown’s industry awards, including a 1997 MTV Video Music Award for the Spice Girls’ infectious, bubblegum-pop megahit “ Wannabe .”
Wide doorways trimmed in nightclub-style LED light strips open one side of the room to a custom-lit wet bar and a state-of-the-art six-seat home theater and the other side to a Baccarat chandelier lit dining room and kitchen chock full of top-quality designer appliances. Privately positioned on the penthouse level with an oblique city lights view, the master suite offers a fireplace and a small sitting area with a coffee bar and a wide-screen TV built in to a smooth-paneled wall along with dual bathrooms and extensive closet space.
There are two en suite guest bedrooms plus a family room on a lower level while the bottom floor contains a recording studio, a mirror-walled gym and a smooth-paneled media lounge that opens to the backyard.
Perched atop a two-car garage accessible by a slender alleyway, the somewhat compact but surprisingly and desirably flat backyard comfortably squeezes in an outdoor grilling station and bar with integrated beer tap and both sunbathing and lounging terraces arranged around a swimming pool and spa set into concrete terracing streaked with embedded LED light strips.
Listing photos: Pacific Union / Dilbeck Real Estate
