It’s no secret that Los Angeles rental rates are astronomical — in fact, renters here spend an average of 47% of their income just to satisfy a landlord. And in Beverly Hills, mansion lessees fork over the cost of a luxury vehicle, each and every month, for their temporary 90210 address. We’re not talking C-Class prices here — more like S-Class cash.
To mere financial mortals, it may seem unfathomable that there are people willing to spend $100,000 per month on a house, but there are and they do.
Still, jaded as we are by these exorbitant prices, even Yolanda was mildly shocked upon stumbling across a luxury Beverly Hills rental asking $350,000 per month. At first we thought someone drunkenly added an extra zero to the ask, but nope. It seem the owners really do think their house commands a monthly lease rate that exceeds the cost of a mansion out in Weedhole, Oklahoma.
Good heavens! That’s a lot of cheddar. Matter of fact, $350k will buy you 130,111 boxes of Kraft singles from Target. For illustration purposes, y’all could donate one of them boxes to nearly every resident in the cities of Santa Monica, Malibu, and Calabasas. Combined.
But we digress. Though the property is technically held solely in the name of a Swiss woman named Jacqueline Baudit, it is common knowledge that Ms. Baudit has long been married to a very, very wealthy Italian film producer named Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Our Mr. De Laurentiis is a nephew of legendary Oscar-winning producer Dino De Laurentiis (may he RIP) and has himself produced and distributed more than 400 films during his 69 years on this planet. However, he is probably best-known — as least to the European public — for having owned the professional Italian football team Napoli since 2004.
Though his ownership of Napoli seems successful and the team has had no financial hardships, Mr. De Laurentiis remains a controversial figure. That’s probably thanks to his notoriously short temper and his propensity to do — and say — just about anything when his feathers get ruffled, no matter how politically incorrect. One of his choicer quotes is “The English live badly, eat badly and their women do not wash their genitalia.” At a 2011 press conference, he became enraged and yelled “I will quit football, you lot are all shit.” And he once fined a Napoli football player for posing in his underpants for a gay men’s magazine because it “disgusted” him. Oh my!
Anyway, we confess ignorance as to Mr. De Laurentiis’s net worth, but he’s got houses around the world and even owned his own floating mansion, the superyacht Angra, though the ship recently — and rather spectacularly — burst into flames and was destroyed off the coast of Italy while the entire De Laurentiis family was aboard. (Luckily, everyone survived without injuries).
And for anyone who was wondering, yes, Mr. De Laurentiis is indeed related to Food Network celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis — they are first cousins once removed. (Incidentally, Ms. De Laurentiis also has a taste for contemporary Los Angeles mansions. But we digress yet again.)
Records show that Baudit-De Laurentiis couple originally purchased the property way back in 2003 for just $2,750,000. They razed the existing contemporary structure and replaced it with a much larger single-story abode. According to the listing, the new house has 7 beds (five en-suite bedrooms and two staff rooms) and 11 baths in 9,500-square-feet of chic living space, and was completed in 2008.
We really don’t know why Mr. De Laurentiis wanted (or needed) such a big and glamorous home in Beverly Hills — it’s our understanding he spends most of his days in Europe — but his son Luigi De Laurentiis graduated from USC’s film school, so maybe that’s why the LA crash pad came to fruition.
Regardless, the house itself isn’t particularly amazing — while certainly luxurious and sleek, it’s a slightly generic design — but the view and pool are exceptional. The listing claims that the house is “by far one of the top 5 view estates in the entire city” and we don’t disagree. There are vistas from the Downtown LA skyline to the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island — on a clear day, of course. And then there’s that swimmin’ pool, which at 5,000-square-feet is one of the largest Yolanda has ever laid eyes upon. You could fit a small mansion in that thing. Literally!
The house is located in the northern end of Beverly Hills, high above Sunset Boulevard and on a quiet cul-de-sac shared with only three other homes — including a massive Paul McClean-designed compound next door that is owned by a Saudi sheikh. So you know there’s bound to be plenty of security in this neighborhood.
Tall hedges and big gates conceal the residence from prying eyes, and trendy ebonized hardwood floors run throughout the structures. The master suite has a build-in soaking tub, a fireplace, and walls of glass that blur the border between the outdoors and in. There are monolithic hallways, a home theater, a gym, and nearly all the home’s materials are of the exotic imported variety. Our Mr. De Laurentiis isn’t one to cut cost corners on his own residence.
The lot sports more than an acre of flat land, which allows for sprawling lawns and numerous outdoor seating/dining options. Relax, breathe, soak up the sun.
Yolanda has no idea who is in the market for a lease of this amount, and we have no idea what this place would fetch if it were ever offered for sale on the open market — we’ll leave to the real estate experts. But if we were pressed to guess, we’d wager it would go for $40 million or maybe even more. By that measure, $350,000 per month almost seems a bargain.
Listing agent: Drew Fenton, Hilton & Hyland