Branden and Rayni Williams to list Hollywood Hills spec home for $38M

First came “Stanley 1,” a spec home built by luxury brokers Branden and Rayni Williams in the Hollywood Hills that sold for $33 million. Now there’s “Stanley 2,” seeking $38 million.

After five years of development, the brokers-turned-builders and partner Jason Somers will sell their 12,500-square-foot mansion at 1851 North Stanley Avenue in Hollywood Hills West, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The three-story, charcoal gray residence is expected to go on the market this fall.

The outside of the James Bond-inspired hillside home is clad mostly in Black Arabian slate, which cost $1 million. It has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a deck-length pool.

The inside of the furnished eight-bedroom, 10-bathroom home, designed in partnership with Victoria Gillet, there’s a fireplace carved from deep green onyx.  Its master bedroom has a $40,000 bed in crushed burnt-orange velvet, which rotates for best views of the Los Angeles basin. 

An entertainment floor contains a movie theater with a green velvet ceiling and a lounge featuring a faux taxidermy mountain lion flanked by two decorative tusks from a vintage store in Palm Springs.

Crystal “installations” were chosen by a shaman, or “sha-woman” in Branden Williams’ telling, who drops by the couple’s properties in white robes and prays for “energy, wealth, abundance, health and love.” 

The Williams, of  Beverly Hills Estates, are no strangers to mega real estate deals, The pair sold Hard Rock Cafe founder Peter Morton’s L.A. home for $110 million, and sold a Bel-Air mansion to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for $88 million.

Their first Stanley spec home, a 10,700-square-foot, four-story hillside mansion with interiors by Lenny Kravitz, sold in 2018 to Merck scion Frank Binder and Alexandra Schuck for $33 million.

Stanley 2 will rise from a half-acre lot bought in 2016 by the Williams and Somers for $2.9 million.

They’re building a much larger spec home on nearby Curson Avenue. The 24,000-square-foot mansion, designed by Scott Mitchell of Malibu’s Nobu restaurant fame, is expected to ask as much as $100 million, according to the Journal.

Construction costs have soared: the Stanley 2 project was supposed to be finished more than a year and a half ago, and is now 50 percent over budget, at more than $1,500 a square foot.

And with higher interest rates, the city’s Measure ULA “mansion tax” and a proposed wildlife ordinance that will restrict development in the Santa Monica Mountains, the market for such spec homes is dwindling.

“It doesn’t even make sense anymore, it’s way too expensive,” Branden Williams told the Journal. “Luckily, we all have good credit and make money. This isn’t our only job. Otherwise, we’d probably be dead in the water, like a lot of developers.”

— Dana Bartholomew

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