The slowing Los Angeles luxury market has claimed another victim.
U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands sold her Bel Air estate for $19.5 million, or just over $1,300 per square foot. That’s a near 50 percent price chop from its original ask in March, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Sands, an executive at Vintage Capital Group and a major contributor to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, had listed the property at $37 million, or just over $2,500 per square foot.
The buyer was not identified. Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland and Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker had the listing. Drew Fenton of Hilton & Hyland represented the buyer.
Sands and her late husband, Fred — a real estate investor — built the 14,700-square-foot Italian Villa in 2002. The four-acre compound on Moraga Drive has four bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a library, walk-in bar, swimming pool and two guest houses. It also includes A 10-car motor court.
Those amenities were not enough to persuade buyers to bite at the original asking price. That has been the case with numerous upscale homes in L.A. over the last year, whose sellers have been forced to chop their original asking price significantly to close the deal. It includes a range of luxury homes, from $6 million to $10 million properties to the ones in the stratosphere.
One recent example of an ultra-luxury listing that sold at a sharp price chop was spec builder Ardie Tavangarian’s 25,000-square-foot Bel Air mansion. It sold for $75 million, chopped from its $88 million asking price. Another was Petra Ecclestone’s Spelling Manor, also in Bel Air. It sold for a record $120 million in July, a price that was still down 40 percent from its $200 million asking. [LAT] — Matthew Blake