Eric Schmidt Snags L.A.’s Spelling Manor for $110 Million—Yes, That One
Jaden Patel here, injecting a little reality into your luxury real estate feed. Let us all feign surprise as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt have acquired the legendary Spelling Manor for $110 million, according to the Wall Street Journal Friday report.
Imagine a mansion so vast that you could lose a small village inside it. Built in the 1990s for TV titan Aaron Spelling and his wife Candy Spelling, the estate sprawls across 56,500 square feet with 14 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms. It’s the kind of property that requires a map, a compass, and maybe a tour guide to find your way from the entry hall to the wine cellar. TMZ first flagged the sale, and the Journal filled in the dollar signs.
Petra Ecclestone, daughter of Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, bought the manor in 2011 for $85 million and lavished it with renovations. By 2019 she had listed it for $120 million and ultimately handed over the keys to the Schmidts. If you’re doing the math, you’ll note that the Schmidts scored a $10 million discount from that last asking price. That is unless you count the private bowling alley, the beauty salon complete with massage rooms and tanning beds, and the fully stocked wine cellar Petra had added at her own expense. In which case they still got a bargain.
The Schmidts are not exactly new to the high-end property game. Their portfolio spans London, Washington D.C., Miami Beach, New York City, San Francisco, Montecito, and Nantucket Island. Now Los Angeles is back on the list, thanks to this latest acquisition handled by Drew Fenton of Carolwood Estates.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Schmidts plan to use the estate for meetings and nonprofit events. That begs the question: will a casual board retreat include a side of bowling and some tanning bed therapy? One can only hope for the sake of our afternoon entertainment.
In the great American tradition of stacking up more square footage than you’ll ever occupy without a GPS, the Spelling Manor remains the king of excess. It stands as a testament to late-night TV royalty, billionaire offspring renovations, and now, a tech mogul’s philanthropic hideaway. All told, it’s a property journey that bears more plot twists than your average soap opera.
So next time you think your weekend Airbnb is extravagant, recall that somewhere in L.A. a single-family residence sprawls like a mini metropolis. And remember, this is just one more day in the circus of extreme luxury real estate.
Well, there you have it. Humanity at its finest.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and TMZ, Wall Street Journal
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
