The Creator of ‘CSI’ Just Dropped $14 Million on a Hilltop Santa Barbara Estate

All signs indicate that Anthony Zuiker, the $200 million man who created and produced the television juggernaut known as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, was indeed the mystery buyer who recently dropped just over $14 million for a hilltop estate in Santa Barbara County. Zuiker scored a discount on the 5-acre property, which had originally been offered for $16.2 million when it hit the market last spring.

Although the home has been said to be located in the perennially posh neighborhood of Montecito—and indeed, its address is frequently written as “Montecito, CA”—our research indicates it lies just a short walk outside that community’s borders. Instead, the property is technically sited in neighboring Summerland, a much lesser-known but still charming and unincorporated beach town about five miles south of Santa Barbara.

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Built in the late 1990s but completely renovated in 2022, the single-story compound sits atop a high knoll on a private street shared with 15 other homes, all of them luxe, multi-acre estates. Comprised of a sprawling main house, a detached guesthouse and a poolside cabana, the contemporary ranch-style spread features a total of four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in nearly 10,000 square feet of sun-drenched living space.

The roughly 8,000-square-foot main house is clearly designed for entertaining. Vast, open public rooms are nearly monumental in scale, while big windows and pocketing glass doors drink in the ocean views. Described as “epicurean” in the listing, the slickly modern kitchen has a huge island and custom cabinetry. There’s a formal dining room, a breakfast nook and a spacious covered loggia for al fresco dining and entertaining, all of them with stunning views of the blue sea.

The primary bedroom suite conveniently adjoins a bespoke study and offers a private terrace with ocean views, a spa-style bathroom and a decidedly bespoke closet with long rows of glass-fronted cabinets. There are also two smaller bedrooms in the main house, one of them facing the mountains and the other tucked away behind the three-car garage. The estate’s fourth bedroom lies in the detached guesthouse, which also sports a full bathroom, living room and kitchenette.

Out back, the sparkling pool hosts an inset spa; the poolside cabana, meanwhile, is tricked out with a media room and a home gym. The tropically-landscaped grounds pay more than a passing tribute to Hawaii, with all manner of palms, hibiscus, creeping vines and long grasses.

Zuiker, 54, has been much in the headlines for his real estate doings in recent years. In early 2023, he paid $6 million for a strikingly contemporary mansion just outside Las Vegas, shortly before selling a smaller but still multimillion-house he owned in the same area.

The procedural forensics crime drama expert also still maintains a $6.2 million waterfront home on California’s Lake Arrowhead and has owned several homes in Malibu, too. Some months before he sold a Bali-inspired estate in 2019 to NBA star Chandler Parsons, he paid another NBA star, Kevin Durant, $12.3 million for an oceanfront home near Broad Beach. That place was sold, earlier this year, for just over $15 million to Roc Nation co-founder Jay Brown.

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