As we’ve previously discussed on several (many) occasions, Ellen DeGeneres has apparently made it her life’s mission to keep real estate agents in the black — and to own every fancy property from San Pedro to Santa Barbara. You see, our Ms. DeGeneres has an unrequited, well-documented, bonafide real estate obsession. It’s true. Yolanda knows nobody — famous or not — who changes their address more frequently than this lady. By our tally, she bought and/or sold seven different properties in 2018 alone.
Well, at least she’s got good taste. Though we’re not even a full month into 2019, Ms. DeGeneres (and her longtime wife Portia de Rossi) are not resting on their luxury real estate laurels. Records confirm that the couple have just paid a whopping $27,000,000 for a Balinese-influenced bauble tucked into the hills at the far eastern end of tony Montecito.
Despite the big sale price, it appears as though Ms. DeGeneres actually got a deal here — depending on how one looks at it. The property was originally listed for $40 million a year ago before being price-chopped down to its final ask: an even-steven $35 million.
Built in 2011, the structure was custom-designed for a woman from Seattle named Marsha Stroum Glazer. Our Mrs. Glazer — her father was the late entrepreneur Sam Stroum, her sister a former US Ambassador under President Obama — and her husband Jay are renowned art patrons, frequently ranked among the world’s top 200 collectors (according to ARTnews).
Mrs. Glazer made big headlines back in 2005, when she loaned a portion of her “priceless” collection — with pieces by name-brand artists like Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, David Hockney and Jackson Pollock — to UCSB for temporary display. The university had to implement stringent new security precautions — armed guards, video cameras, elaborate motion detection systems — just to accommodate Mrs. Glazer’s mind-blowing haul. But we digress.
The 8.24-acre property is wondrously private, the house tucked behind a long, winding driveway and invisible from the street out front. On first approach, the structure appears to have a mini-pagoda retro sorta-theme, but that notion is quickly dispelled by the entryway: the glassy walls reveal the home’s innards — clearly, this is a contemporary with traditional East Asian accents, not the other way ’round.
Contained within these walls are 5 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and a mansion-sized 8,188-square-feet of living space. The place appears to have been designed on a limitless budget — which it probably was — with numerous exotic features like bamboo ceilings, flamed black limestone, and distressed oak floors.
The enormous great room contains disappearing walls of glass — on the southern side — to allow easy access to the veranda, with its firepit and al fresco dining area. Below that are acres of expansive lawn and gardens, with skyline views framing the Pacific Ocean.
And yes, this property is a true compound — in addition to the main residence, there’s a guesthouse with two en-suite bedrooms and a kitchen, a detached office, plus a private cabana tucked away by the pool and complete with gym and changing facilities.
Speaking of the pool, it’s a one-of-a-kind basalt pebble infinity number that looks to be a real engineering marvel — just gaze at it thrusting out over the deep blue sea. Wow! Ms. DeGeneres, if you ever need a house-sitter, please give us a ring.
Naturally the entire property is verdantly landscaped with formal gardens and exotic tropical plantings. According to the listing, also included on the estate is a second parcel — “an attached lot” — that offers a “perfect” building site. Perhaps Ms. DeGeneres will construct a spec-mansion there. Or potentially expand the current estate with yet another ancillary structure.
Ms. DeGeneres is a longtime fan of Santa Barbara County, and her new $27 million compound happens to be almost directly directly across the street from another property she owns — a far more modest equestrian ranch that she bought last year (2018) for $6,700,000.
And just down the hill from those two estates is the lady’s third Santa Barbara-area home — an $18.6 million contemporary showpiece set right on the Carpinteria sand.
In addition to those residences up north, Ms. DeGeneres and Ms. de Rossi also keep an in-town LA home, a $15 million mid-century modern residence deep within the 90210’s coveted Trousdale Estates enclave.
Originally built in 1962 by celebrated architect John Elgin Woolf, the single story Beverly Hills casa was revamped in 2017 by noted design firm Marmol Radziner.
2018 was a banner year for Ms. DeGeneres’s real estate ventures — she sold another Montecito spread for $34 million to Netflix bigwig Ted Sarandos and got $35 million cash from billionaire divorcee Sue Gross in Beverly Hills.
Let’s see if she can top those big deals in 2019, shall we?
Listing agents: Ivor Miskulin & Suzanne Perkins, Compass
Ellen DeGeneres’s agent: Suzanne Perkins, Compass