14 DAY TRIAL // The “greatest house ever,” as TMZ calls it, has just been sold. Hugh Hefner unloaded his personal mansion, situated right next to the iconic Playboy Mansion, for a cool $18 million, in a bid to cut down on the losses suffered recently. Listed since early March for over $29 million, the impressive estate has finally switched hands, as Hot Property of the Los Angeles Times can confirm.
As it’s common knowledge, Hugh did not live in the house that just went off the market, although its brilliant architecture and attention to detail, as well as the surface of the entire estate would have been enough for it to be worth this kind of money. However, his wife Kimberley did reside there – and the fact that it is adjacent to the actual Mansion, the one where all the parties are held and celebrities flock at given periods of time, were just two of the things that recommended it.
“The 7,300-square-foot English Manor-style house, built in 1929, has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The two-story home sits behind private gates on 2.3 flat acres that back up to the Los Angeles Country Club. Rooms include a formal living room, dining room, library, his-and-her powder rooms and a media room with a film projector and built-in screen that drops from the ceiling.” Hot Property writes of the mansion in question.
But that’s not all, according to the same source: “There are hand-painted walls, maple paneling, leaded-glass windows and a hand-carved staircase. The master suite overlooks garden and grounds, which include a swimming pool. The home was designed by Arthur R. Kelly for the sister of Arthur Letts Jr., the original owner of the Playboy mansion. The Hefners bought the property in 1996 for an undisclosed sum. It had been listed then at $17.25 million.”
As we also reported back in March, speculation had it that Hefner was trying to sell his personal house because recession had hit his business very hard. His financial advisors told him at the time that he must eliminate all “unnecessary expenses” if he wanted his business empire to survive and, apparently, the house that was just sold was the first on the list to go. Not surprisingly, news that Hefner was actually selling property to cut down losses sparked again speculation of the empire going down, never to get up again, in a context where poor sales, poor economy and Hefner’s reportedly frail health were finally taking their toll on Playboy.