Tell Yolanda what you want to read about, and we’ll do our best to accommodate. That’s our motto up in here. Of course, we’re not about to write about politics or technology or other assorted foolishness — surely you can read about those things on a million other websites — but when it comes to luxury real estate, we’re all ears.
Last week Yolanda received requests from two separate people (or maybe it was the same person asking under two names, we really don’t know) for a story about a fat-ass mansion out in the guard-gated city of Hidden Hills. And Yolanda herself has a peculiar fondness for Hidden Hills, even if many homes out there aren’t necessarily our architectural cups of tea. And so we were more than happy to oblige our reader(s) in this case.
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Anyway, we can see why folks might want to learn more about this particular property. It sold for just over $2 million in 2013 to a prominent local developer who spec-built a mammoth mansion. He then slapped an eyebrow-raising $18.5 million pricetag on the hedonistic heifer and watched as it languished on the market for nearly a full year. But then — glory be! — along came a buyer who paid him $16 million for the keys. That’s a big discount off the ask, but it’s still one of the largest sums ever paid in pricey Hidden Hills, which is itself easily the most expensive community in the entire San Fernando Valley.
Whoever bought this place is very rich. That much is obvious.
Our new owners’ identities are guarded behind an LLC, but a wee bit of research very clearly shows that they are a married couple whose names are Dan Funsch and Sheree LaDove Funsch. And while those certainly aren’t household names for most regular folks, the Funsches are well-known — some might even say famous — in the $170 billion cosmetics industry in which they both operate.
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The Rolls Royce-driving Mrs. Funsch is CEO of LaDove, a Miami-based “one stop development boutique” where haircare and skincare products are tested and developed. Basically Mrs. Funsch manufactures many of the products you can buy in a fancy salon or uptown shopping mall, you just don’t know it. Here she is talking about her business, if any of y’all are interested. “At heart, I’m just a cosmetics geek dressed in Chanel and Louboutins,” Mrs. Funsch says in her video. Well, alrighty then.
Mr. Funsch also runs his own business — he is CEO of Intarome, a New Jersey-based corporation that specializes in manufacturing a wide range of custom fragrances and flavors to companies in a number of industries, including cleaning supply, food and beverage production, and household product companies. (However, Intarome’s main product line appears to be manufacturing fragrances for men’s cologne.)
Since both Mr. and Mrs. Funsch run successful businesses in different states — and both admit to being frequent globetrotters — the couple likely rack up more air miles in a single year than many folks do in their entire lives. In 2016, Mrs. Funsch spoke of her fondness for Swiss private aviation startup VistaJet.
“With businesses around the world, my husband and I need a global solution that accommodates many different types of trips, so owning one aircraft or a fraction of one doesn’t work for us,” she told Fast Company magazine. “We pay for occupied hours only, give very little notice when we are ready to depart, and everything is included, from a cabin hostess to catering from the best restaurants and hotels in the world.”
Anywho, Mr. and Mrs. Funsch were both married to other people before they hitched their proverbial wagons to one another. Mr. Funsch has two sons and one daughter from a previous marriage (all of whom are now adults) and Mrs. Funsch has two daughters from her own prior marriage. Her elder daughter is an adult college grad, while the younger one is 16 years old and is an aspiring singer named Ashley Brinton Kent who has more than 30,000 followers on the Instagram contraption. But we digress.
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We are a little unsure about what the proper architecural vernacular is here (neo-Palladian?), but the Funsches’ Hidden Hills house is certainly large and in charge. And it should have no trouble at all impressing their less financially fortunate guests. But good golly, do those windows have enough arches, or what?
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Were the front door a bit larger, an experienced pilot could probably land a midsized jet in the entrance foyer without scathing a single wall, but we doubt the Hidden Hills HOA would take kindly to that sort of tomfoolery. Don’t get any ideas, Funsches.
As you might expect in a $16 million Hidden Hills mansion, the home has a baronial paneled office, and a swanky living room and swanky dining room, both of which are fireplace-equipped and open to the backyard/pool area. Floor materials are throughout the home are of marble and herringbone-patterned hardwood. Nice.
Yolanda is not crazy about some of those ceiling treatments, however. Looks a little ticky-tacky, a bit too “Look at me, I’m a mansion and I was built on spec!!!!11” to your gurl.
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The family room opens to the kitchen, which features a portly center island with bar-style seating and a glass-fronted SubZero fridge that probably cost more than an off-lease Mercedes-Benz C-class. Elsewhere there’s a wine cellar/wine rack and a formal dining room area set off by more darn arches.
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Indoor recreational amenities are plentiful and include a serious home theater with tiered couch seating, a pool table- and wet bar-equipped game room, a massage room w/ steam bath, and a home gym. Somewhere there’s also an elevator.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
The estate is comprised of three separate structures: there is the main house (two stories with an attached 5-car garage) plus a guest house and a detached 7-car garage, for a total of 12 covered parking spaces. There is a total of 13,895-square-feet of living space with 7 beds and 9.5 baths spread across the compound.
Most impressive, of course, is the master suite with its prairie-sized bathroom and two enormous walk-in closets.
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The 1.12-acre spread provides plenty of space for outdoor entertaining — there’s an unconventional indoor/outdoor bar, for starters. More mainstream perks include a pizza oven, BBQ grill, a firepit, and a vaguely tomahawk-shaped negative-edge swimming pool for cooling off on all those hot Valley days.
Some of the Funsches’ new neighbors include music stars like Drake and The Weeknd, comedians like Howie Mandel and Russell Peters, and sports celebrities like Vin Scully and Paul George. Oh, and a gaggle of those quickly-reproducing Kardashians. Can’t forget them!
For the last year or so, the Funsches had been renting an $8.5 million mock-Med mansion in the western Beverly Hills flats.
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The 6,749-square-foot structure has 5 beds and 5.5 baths. And while we’re not sure how much the couple was paying to rent the property, the house recently popped up for lease with a jaw-dislocating $37,500/mo asking price. Holy mackeral! $37k for that?! We can see why the Funsches wanted to buy, if they were paying anywhere near that ask.
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Since long before she married Mr. Funsch, Mrs. Funsch has owned a 10,000-square-foot waterfront mansion in Florida’s Delray Beach neighborhood. (Mrs. Funsch attempted to sell the property in 2016 at a $14,995,000 price point, but was not successful).
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And since long before he married Mrs. Funsch, Mr. Funsch has owned a 2.4-acre spread in fancy-pants Saddle River, New Jersey, which has frequently been ranked as one of the wealthiest communities in all the United States.
Listing agents: Marc & Rory Shevin, Berkshire Hathaway HomeService
Mr. & Mrs. Funsch’s agent: Milla Pariser, Rodeo Realty