It was The Hollywood Reporter who first revealed that billionaire software heiress/film producer Megan Ellison raked in more than $35 million in a not-so-secret off-market deal for her idiosyncratic (and very visible) home high above the Sunset Strip in the Mount Olympus neighborhood of Hollywood Hills. Records now reveal that the transaction went down for $35,350,000.
This is not the most expensive house ever sold in the Hollywood Hills — that honor goes to the now-abandoned Bird Streets pad that was purchased by Malaysian swindler Jho Low for $38,980,000 nearly five years ago — but it’s certainly close.
Now, to call this place oddball would be a massive understatement. To our eyes, it looks rather more like a swoopy house of worship than a “normal” single-family residence. Built in the early 1990s and situated on nearly 8.25 acres of land, it was owned for over a decade by a dude named Eddy Aslanian. It was our Mr. Aslanian sold the home at the tail end of 2013 to Miss Ellison for an even-steven $30,000,000.
Yolanda has written about this house on at least two separate occasions, so we won’t get too far into the weeds here, but it’s certainly an interesting place with 9,204-square-feet of living space featuring 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. Over the years, it has been featured in several films (I Love You, Man among them) and has also reportedly been the setting for numerous — ahem — “high-quality” porn flicks. But Yolanda wouldn’t know anything about that.
So the rumors go, Miss Ellison was all set to raze the property to build something more spectacular and had even purchased a temporary crash pad in Beverly Hills in which to live while construction commenced. Alas, as fickle billionaire heiresses are wont to do, Miss Ellison abruptly changed her mind. She sold her (relatively) modest Beverly Hills abode at a million-dollar-plus loss and now has dumped her Mount Olympus promised land, too.
The buyer of Miss Ellison’s pad is Woodbridge Investments, a semi-secretive investment group/high-end real estate developer fronted by Robert Shapiro, a guy (allegedly!) prone to transgender discrimination. Oh, my!
Woodbridge and Mr. Shapiro have been spending hundreds of millions of bucks to buy up much of LA’s prime real estate. They’ve got properties in the Bird Streets, Trousdale Estates, Bel Air, and even as far out as Hidden Hills. They also — in case y’all didn’t know — last year paid $90 million for the legendary Owlwood Estate in the Holmby Hills neighborhood. (That estate is back up for sale at a reasonable $180 million).
Back to Miss Ellison. Records show she isn’t out of the Hollywood Hills completely, at least not yet. She still owns a small contemporary-style crib right next door to the big pad she just sold. That house — dwarfed by the enormous structure next door — is currently for sale at an ask of $4,395,000. Unfortunately for Miss Ellison, that’s almost a million bucks less than the $5.25 million she paid for the place in 2015.
Anyway, Miss Ellison has long since decamped her Hollywood Hills pad to move down the mountain. She now resides in a privately-situated compound in one of the best areas of Beverly Hills. She purchased the 1920s Spanish-style sprawler for $15,500,000 in late 2016 from Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, as was first revealed by Our Mama at Variety magazine.
A few months later, as Yolanda blabbed about, she paid $6,895,000 for the mid-century house next door.
Some of Miss Ellison’s nearest new neighbors in B.H. include Sheryl Sandberg’s bazillionaire boyfriend Bobby Kotick, infomercial king Bill Guthy and his wife Victoria Jackson, and Downtown LA luxury apartment mogul Geoff Palmer.
Listing agent: Lisa Optican, Mercer Vine
Selling agents: Kyle Giese and Adam Rosenfeld, Mercer Vine; Tyrone McKillen, Hilton & Hyland