A sprawling equestrian estate in Brentwood is hitting the market in what could become the biggest sale by lot size in Los Angeles in decades.
The Robert Taylor Ranch, once home to Hollywood Golden Age actors Robert Taylor, is for sale for $70 million, The Los Angeles Times reported. The property at 3099 Mandeville Canyon Road spans 112 acres, or more than 1 percent of Brentwood’s area of 15 square miles.
It’s the largest residential estate to hit the market in the city of L.A. since at least the 1980s when the Multiple Listing Service started tracking home sales.
There are four structures on the property with about 20,000 total square feet of living space. The 12,000-square-foot main house contains seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a dog spa, art studio and massage room. When Taylor occupied the residence, there was a secret casino in the home only accessible through a hidden door and hallway found in a rotating bookcase. The casino no longer exists, but the secret door and hallway remain.
A guest house, barn and workshop are also on site. The property has 14 flat, buildable acres, while the rest of the hillside estate has hiking trails. The main house underwent a four-year remodel over the past decade that added bronze windows, reclaimed wood, limestone floors and hand-laid stucco inside and outside.
Taylor moved into the home after it was built in 1950 and lived there until his death in 1969. In the 1970s, KROQ radio mogul Ken Roberts bought and remodeled the property and ended up trying to sell it several times over the following decades, including asking $45 million for it in 1990, to no avail. It was seized by a hedge fund in 2010 after Roberts couldn’t pay back a $27.5 million loan from New Stream Capital. Two years later, the property was auctioned off to Chicago real estate developer Fred Latsko for $12 million. He sold the property in 2015 for $18.7 million.
The property includes eight assessor’s parcel numbers, so it’s possible a developer could swoop in and split it up into separate properties and build housing.
“The potential will be attractive to some,” Rochelle Maize of Nourmand & Associates, who’s handling the listing, told the L.A. Times. “But either way, the buyer will be someone that values privacy. The setting here is second to none.”