LeBron James Snags $21M L.A. Mansion as His Hollywood Habit Grows
(House photo from Google Street View, Lebron James photo from Getty Images)
Goodbye Florida, hello California.
LeBron James’ basketball career may be firmly planted in Ohio for at least another year, but he has his eyes on a second career a little closer to Hollywood, and now he has the house to prove it.
James, jumping on the pocket/whisper/private listing trend, recently purchased a $21 million six-bedroom, seven-bathroom mansion in Brentwood, California. Though the house never made an appearance in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), site of the vast majority of homes for sale, Variety found him out and “circumstantially affirmed with property records” that he’d bought the house.
At 9,440 square feet, it’s a big place but, let’s face it, not that big, at least compared with James’ 30,000-square-foot mansion in Ohio (which, coincidentally, costs about half what he paid for the significantly-smaller Brentwood place). And it doesn’t even come close to Michael Jordan’s 56,000-square-foot trash-talking gargantumansion.
The L.A. house doesn’t have listing photos due to the fact that it was never officially listed, but according to Variety, the stone-and-white-brick house opens into a grand foyer flanked by a dining room and living room with less-formal family room and kitchen near the back. A deck leads out to a swimming pool in the backyard. The master bedroom includes a two-way fireplace shared with a sitting room.
The purchase comes shortly after LeBron James unloaded his three-story, 16,678-square-foot waterfront manse in Coconut Grove, Florida, for $13.4 million over the summer. It was the highest price paid for a home in the community at $803 per square foot, according to the South Florida Business Journal, and he apparently made a few million on the sale.
It’s hard to tell exactly what this dive into Los Angeles real estate means for the NBA star’s career. The Washington Post wonders if it’s at all connected to the facts that his Cavaliers contract is expiring and that Kobe Bryant’s “gargantuan” deal with the Lakers is coming to a close.
But Cleveland.com interviewed “a source close to James” who said the house is nothing more than a vacation home and a place to pursue new business opportunities. James made his well-received acting debut earlier this year in “Trainwreck” starring Amy Schumer (who just listed her own little Manhattan apartment at about $2 million), and he inked a development deal with Warner Brothers (which has yet to include a starring role in a “Space Jam” sequel, but fingers remain crossed). So it’s possible that the days he’s not spending on the court, he might start spending on a set.
Plus, no offense to the Midwest, but he may also simply miss the kind of warm weather he left behind in Miami.
More celebrity homes on Yahoo Real Estate:
• Michael Jordan’s Mansion Wants You to Buy It, Mocks Other Weakling Mansions (3 videos, 40-plus photos)
• Amy Schumer Lists Little Manhattan Apartment at $2.1M (12 photos)
• Britney Spears, the New ‘Queen of Vegas,’ Treats Herself to $7.4M L.A. Retreat (63 photos)
In the absence of pictures of his new house in Los Angeles, here are pictures of the “palace” that self-styled King James sold over the summer in Miami:
