Although we’d love to stay and play with y’all today, Yolanda has a fancy-pants party to attend tonight and thus we’ve got our hair up in rollers and a terrycloth robe ’round our shoulders while Leslie — our personal makeup applier slash miracle worker — contours our face, square millimeter by square millimeter. After all, it takes a lot of time to look this good. Regrettably, that means we have to take it on the run with today’s story.
A few months back, Yolanda was contacted by our good friend Vlad the Revealer at Celebrity Address Aerial, who pointed us to a rather extravagant, newly-built spread in the appallingly pricey Riviera area of the already expensive Pacific Palisades.
The spread sold for exactly $22,000,000 back in February (2017), and Vlad noted that all but one listing photo was yanked off the MLS. (That’s normally a sign of a celebrity buyer, for all y’all newbies out there). The buyer’s identity is cloaked behind something called “Victrola 89 LLC”, a mysterious corporate entity linked to an address in the unlikely city of Whittier (CA), a fairly rough-and-tumble town on the outskirts of Los Angeles County.
Yolanda was curious about the sale because of all these aforementioned facts, of course, but also because our research indicates this is the most expensive residential transaction on the Westside of LA (or west of the 405, at least) for 2017. So far, at least.
So who is the buyer?
Well, it took Yolanda a hot minute but we finally got it sorted out. Much to our surprise, the new owner is not a celebrity or anyone we had ever heard of before. It’s an ultra-low-profile LA-based financier named Matt Barrett — full name Matthew Scott Barrett — and his longtime wife, therapist Kathy Barrett.
Though Yolanda can almost guarantee that our casual blog followers have never before heard of Mr. & Mrs. Barrett, rest assured that our research indicates they can definitely afford a $22 million mansion and probably a lot more, too. Our Mr. Barrett, you see, happens to be the co-founder of Santa Monica-based hedge fund Glendon Capital Management, which has approximately $400 million AUM. Before that, he was head of distressed debt at Barclay’s, and prior to that a Managing Director at Oaktree Capital Management.
Matt Barrett is so low-profile that Yolanda can’t even find an online photo of this fella. We apologize for that. Just know that Mr. & Mrs. Barrett are in their 50s and Yolanda believes they have two or three adult children. But now, house time:
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It’s a little bit funny to Yolanda, but this place was marketed by the Hollywood spec-developer (Jaman Properties) as being “the former residence of Ronald Reagan“. While it is situated on a parcel of land that was once occupied by Ronald Reagan’s Pac Pal house (sold in 1982), the current structure — a newly-built grandly-scaled contemporary Spanish — bears no similarities whatsoever to the modest mid-century home once owned by the Reagans. Thus the marketing of the property as “Ronald Reagan’s former estate” or whatever just causes Yolanda to roll her eyes round and round till we can’t feel them no more.
Seriously, all that remains of the Reagans’ residence is a refurbished living room bar, and his old shower door was mounted as a commemorative art fixture in the library. Big whoop!
Do excuse our sass — this curlin’ iron is burning. The new property has every creature comfort available, and then some: five bedrooms and 8.5-bathroom bathrooms, a kitchen with a hand-made Italian range that probably costs more than a new S-Class Benz, an elevator, a home automation system, a top-notch security system, sizable motor court, four-car garage, a climate controlled 2,000-bottle wine room, and a cashmere-lined screening room with state-of-the-art projection system. There is also a 1-bed/1-bath guest house, a massive heated veranda, and knock-your-damn-socks-off views of the entire LA basin, the Pacific Ocean, and even Catalina.
Mr. & Mrs. Barrett did not have far to schlep their belongings once they moved into their big new Pac Pal estate. Records show they have long resided on a posh street in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, where way back in 2003 they paid $5,150,000 for a Traditional-style house in a fashionable area of the leafy neighborhood. It is clear that the Barretts have already moved to the Palisades, as the house just recently popped up for sale at $7,950,000 and looks staged to the max.
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The corner lot house was built in 2001, records show, and has a comfortable (but not massive) 5,844-square-feet of living space with 5 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms. There’s a commercial-grade kitchen with a center island and bar plus high-end stainless appliances, formal living and dining rooms, a master bedroom with vaulted ceiling and a master bath with a step-in glass-doored shower, and a two-car garage. Regrettably, the house sports a spa but no pool, which for almost 8 million bucks would be a deal-breaker in Yolanda’s book. But we digress.
The best feature of all, however, is that Mr. & Mrs. Barrett’s former home is but a short stroll to one of Yolanda’s all-time favorite shopping locations: the quaint Brentwood Country Mart. If all that appeals to you and you can swing the purchase price (plus $100k or so in annual property taxes), give Mr. & Mrs. Barrett’s friendly neighborhood realtor a ring-ring.
Listing agent (Pacific Palisades): Kurt Rappaport, Westside Estate Agency
Matt & Kathy Barrett’s agent (Pacific Palisades): Richard Stearns, Partners Trust Brentwood
Matt & Kathy Barrett’s agent (Brentwood): Barbara Boyle, Sotheby’s International Realty