Marta Kauffman Secretly Sells to Nate Berkus (EXCLUSIVE)
Sitcom super-producer Marta Kauffman and composer Michael Skloff recently ended their 30-plus-year marriage and subsequently put their long-time home in the high-toned heart of Los Angeles’s Hancock Park up for grabs, with an off-market asking price just shy of $8.5 million. Digital marketing materials show the property as under contract, and always impeccably informed real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak swears on her beloved alligator-skin Birkin bag that the buyers are decorator/designer/TV personality Nate Berkus and his interior decorator husband, Jeremiah Brent, who will (Yolanda tattled) close the deal at around $8 million.
The estate, purchased by Kauffman and Skloff in 1997 for a bit below $1.47 million, spans about two-thirds of an acre of verdantly manicured grounds anchored by an almost 8,500-square-foot Spanish mansion with six bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus a self-contained two-bedroom/one-bath guesthouse atop a detached three-car garage. A grand entrance hall with a checkerboard parquet floor leads to formal living and dining rooms, the former with fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows, the latter with an intricately articulated, honeycomb-patterned ceiling treatment. An up-to-date eat-in kitchen with a supersized center island opens to a lounge, and a separate family room with terracotta tile pavers offers a fireplace and integrated media equipment with a drop-down screen. The master suite includes a fireplace, a spacious, vintage-tiled bathroom, and a small terrace that overlooks a slender courtyard with a koi pond and a palm-shaded backyard with a swimming pool and sport court.
Kauffman, who co-created the lucratively syndicated “Friends” sitcom and the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” and Skloff, who wrote the theme songs for both shows, previously owned a bluff-top residence in Malibu they sold in 2014 for $6.37 million to Ellen Pompeo and Chris Ivory. And, for now at least, they continue to own an oceanfront house along Broad Beach purchased in 2007 for just over $12.75 million, as well as a couple of hillside houses on the same cul-de-sac in the Hollywood Hills.
As for Berkus and Brent, over the last few years they’ve become property gossip staples on both coasts. In July 2013, Berkus bought two separate but contiguous penthouse apartments in lower Manhattan for a total of $5.97 million that were combined and sold in June for $9.8 million. In September 2015, the telegenic couple dropped $2.36 million on a 1920s Spanish Revival just above L.A.’s Sunset Strip that they cosmetically refreshed and now have back on the market with an asking price a hair under $3 million.
image: Google
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