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Oprah has now spent $86M on her Montecito real estate empire
Winfrey just paid $6.85M to acquire Jeff Bridges’ property, expanding her territory to 70 acres
What Oprah wants, Oprah gets. And the billionaire mogul wants to expand her real estate empire in Montecito.
Winfrey paid $6.85 million to acquire actor Jeff Bridges’ Spanish revival home in Montecito, which sits next door to Seamair Farm, a 23-acre plot that borders her main 43-acre compound known as “Promised Land,” according to Variety, which first reported the news.
With the deal for Bridges’ home, Winfrey has now spent a total of $86 million acquiring Montecito real estate.
Sally Hanseth of Coldwell Banker is listed as sales and buying agent on the celebrity deal.
Bridges, who also paid $6.85 million for the home in 2014, listed the home in March for $8 million. But Oprah waited six months for a price chop before she made her move, according to Variety.
Bridges’ former property features a carriage house and horse facility with five stalls as well as redwood and oak grove trees.
The transaction further solidifies Montecito as Winfrey’s base. The talk show host and media entrepreneur initially bought in a 42-acre property in Montecito for $50 million in 2001. It contains her main home, a 23,000-square-foot neo-Georgian mansion with six bedrooms, 10 fireplaces. Winfrey bought out the neighboring Seafair Farm equestrian ranch for $29 million in 2015.
She now controls about 70 contiguous acres, with 13 separate buildings, two pools, ocean views and a tennis court.
As Winfrey has bought into Montecito, she has exited out of Chicago, the city where she got her media start on WLS’s AM Chicago in 1984.
Winfrey completed the last sales of her Chicago area real estate last year, when she unloaded a colonial in the suburb of Elmwood Park for $375,000.
Previously, Winfrey sold a 10,000-square-foot duplex just north of Chicago’s downtown for $4.6 million in 2015, and sold a co-op in the ritzy Gold Coast neighborhood for $2.8 million in 2012.
In addition to Montecito, Winfrey owns a beach getaway in Hawaii, a serene $8 million compound on Orcas Island in the Puget Sound, and a $13 million ski chalet in Telluride, Colorado. [Variety] — Matthew Blake