Free Gift With Purchase? This $14.5 Million LA Estate Comes With a Helicopter
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For a home with a non-trivial $14.5 million asking price, you might expect a lengthy list of luxury accoutrements to be included. Tennis court, swimming pool, screening room, Jacuzzi tub. All that. But a $400,000 helicopter?
For the lucky buyers of this 16-acre Tuscan-style estate nestled in the rolling hills of Los Angeles’ Topanga State Park and a 30-minute drive from Santa Monica, the sale includes a Robinson Raven R44 Raven II helicopter—plus a 500-foot grassy lawn on which to land it.
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Of course there’s one teeny catch. You only get the chopper if you make a full-price offer on the home. Clickbait? Think of it more as creative marketing, along the lines of a dinosaur fossil used to lure buyers to a home in Beverly Hills earlier this year.
“The owner has held a number of events at the property where guests flew in by helicopter,” explains Diana Armstrong-Bruns, listing agent with Keller Williams Calabasas.
“As the home has the perfect place to land one, and doesn’t have the restrictions you get in, say, Malibu, he thought it might add interest to include one in the sale,” she adds.
Conveniently, a friend owns the $400,000 Robinson and is willing to part with it.
The home’s owner is David Glickman, 54, founder and CEO of pre-paid mobile cellular carriers Ultra Mobile and Mint Mobil. He and his wife Paige built the home in 2004 after paying a reported $1.4 million for the hillside lot just off Topanga Canyon Blvd.
A long, winding driveway leads to the Italian villa-style house, with its terracotta barrel-tile roof, soft yellow exterior and gray-blue wood doors and shutters. Inside the 12,000-square-foot, two-story home are eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a guest wing and endless areas for entertaining.
The main reception rooms feature towering ceilings with wood beams and wood-framed arched windows, many of which lead out on to the huge patios. The large, eat-in kitchen with its arched ceiling and professional-grade appliances, opens out to a screened-in dining patio.
The second floor features the all en-suite bedrooms, including a master with two separate bathrooms and two expansive walk-in closets. Doors lead out from the master on to a deck with a Jacuzzi tub offering jaw-dropping views down Topanga Canyon.
But it’s the grounds of this exceptional estate that arguably set it apart. Among those 16 acres is that endless grass lawn—perfect for weddings, fundraisers, soccer games and tee-times, as well as landing helicopters. There’s also a 65-foot-long swimming pool with hot tub, a lighted and high-fenced tennis court and even an orchard.
The entire estate is also self-sufficient, courtesy of its deep well that provides water for the sprinklers, and solar panels that, according to Armstrong-Bruns, can provide up to 90 percent of the estate’s power needs.
All that water could also help any budding viticulturists create a vineyard on the property, says Armstrong-Bruns. And if this appeals to a prospective buyer, Glickman is prepared to throw in an adjoining seven-acre plot he owns, for an additional $1 million.
Don’t even think about using it to build a runway. Just stick with the helicopter.
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