Connie Stevens Finally Sells Long-time Holmby Hills Compound (EXCLUSIVE)
SELLER: Connie Stevens
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $17,000,000
SIZE: 8,460, 7 bedrooms, 7 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Though touted in 2000 by L.A. Magazine as one of Hollywood’s wealthiest woman, Connie Stevens’s pecuniary circumstances soon took a dire turn for the worse and, after a long slog, the iconic and almost preternaturally perky singer and actress, now 77, has finally dumped her long-time Holmby Hills mansion out of bankruptcy proceedings for $17 million. Property records show Miz Stevens, who parlayed her 1950s and ‘60s showbiz success into the once exuberantly successful Forever Spring skin care and cosmetics empire, purchased the 1.91-acre spread in February 1974 for $350,000. The double-gated property, which backs up to busy and loud Sunset Boulevard, first came up for sale in late 2012 at $17.99 million, was taken off the market the following August, and then re-listed the next March (2014) with an inexplicably higher $18.5 million price tag.
The main residence, a stately if somewhat down-on-her-heels white brick center hall Colonial originally designed in the late 1930s by celebrated architect Paul Williams, measures in at a comfortably commodious 8,460-square-feet according to the L.A. County Tax Man and the house’s seven bedrooms and seven full and two half bathrooms include a two-bedroom staff suite. Directly across the street from the backside of an estate owned by Kelsey Grammer, the compound-like property also has a separate chauffeur’s apartment, two blandly contemporary one-bedroom townhouse-style guesthouses that overlook the swimming pool, and a pool house with two bathrooms. The grounds have extensive if not exactly meticulously kept gardens and beyond the swimming pool there’s a lighted sunken tennis court that doesn’t look in listing photographs to this tennis playing property gossip as if it’s in suitable condition for an actual match.
Avid celebrity real estate watchers well know this is not the first time Miz Stevens has faced the forced sale of a multi-million dollar property due to financial hardship. In 2011 she stared down the gaping maw of foreclosure on a 9,868-square-foot log cabin mansion on 5.59 rugged acres in the gated Indian Springs enclave near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She managed to stave off the foreclosure and, after several unsuccessful attempts, sold the six-bedroom and eight-bathroom residence in April 2015 for $6.8 million. The buyer, according to property records, was a generously compensated high-level executive at Home Depot.
The Brooklyn-born entertainer — who was given the name Concetta Ingoglia and, at 12, was sent to live with family friends in Boonville, Missouri, after she witnessed a murder — kept a 2,479-square-foot crash pad in New York City that she had up for sale for a few months in 2009 at $7.995 million and then again in May of 2010 with an again inexplicably higher $8.2 million asking price. The three bedroom and 3.5 bathroom aerie on the 54th floor of the Park Millennium complex near Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side — Howard Stern owns a huge apartment in the building — was sold according to property records and reports from the time to an investor in June 2010 for $7 million.
Miz Stevens’s real estate portfolio also included a duplex property in Pasadena with two wee and charming 1920s bungalows — sold in March 2010 for $560,000; a 3,085-square-foot residence in the Coldwater Canyon area of Beverly Hills — sold in May 2013 for $750,000; and a 4,182-square-foot house off of Beverly Glen Boulevard in the upper reaches of Bel Air that was deeded over in February 2014 to her younger daughter, Tricia Fisher.
Listing photos: Coldwell Banker
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