So long to the hippies in Venice and the tourists in Santa Monica — Silicon Beach elites are now opting for family-friendly Brentwood.
The “bros” of Silicon Beach are increasingly choosing Brentwood, a wealthy (and more inland) neighborhood home to sprawling estates, rather than the oceanside cities of Playa del Rey, Venice and Santa Monica, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In the last decade, Silicon Beach has grown to be a respectable technology hub as Snap Inc., Tesla, Riot Games, Google and Yahoo settled on the sandy coast.
Its presence in Venice — largely driven by Snapchat’s unique real estate strategy of having several offices as opposed to single headquarters — has led to much neighborhood backlash, involving petitions and rallies against the social media company.
Aside from escaping the complaining neighbors, those in the C-suite are also finding they can get more for their buck over in Brentwood, especially considering prices are breaking records and inventory is dwindling in the adjacent areas to the west.
“Most of these people have families, so they want bigger pieces of land,” Santiago Arana of the Agency told THR. “No one wants to be picketed at their house,” added Halton Pardee and Partner’s Tami Pardee, who said privacy is a top concern for the founders, who have become the targets of gentrification protests in Venice.
Among those settling in to the quiet neighborhood are Snap’s Evan Spiegel and his supermodel wife Miranda Kerr, who dropped $12 million for a residence behind the esteemed Getty Museum. Zillow founder Spencer Rascoff snagged a Brentwood Park mansion for $20 million last year, just under what Riot Games executive Brandon Beck paid for his $21.5 million mansion in 2015. Tesla founder Elon Musk, Snap chairman Michael Lynton, Disney executive Sean Bailey and Yahoo executive Mickie Rosen also own homes in the zip code. [THR] – Natalie Hoberman