Carmel Mansion Lists for Potential Record-Breaking Price

A Carmel Highlands mansion featured in movies and TV shows is ready for its close-up.

The luxury oceanside property known as “Seacliff” has hit the market for nearly $91.2 million, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported. The listing price is more than double the current record for the priciest sale in Monterey County, set last year with a $45 million manse in Pebble Beach.

Film lovers might recognize the Spindrift Road property from the 1992 thriller “Basic Instinct.” The home was also featured in an episode of HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” set in the nearby city of Monterey. The property was also previously owned by world record holding aviator Steve Fossett.

Colorado-based software entrepreneur Gary Vickers and his wife Kerry Vickers are the sellers. The couple listed the seaside estate for more than $52 million in 2019 as well as the main home as a standalone listing for $29.6 million in 2022. They’ve since completed an $11 million renovation and added more land to the property after grabbing an additional 1.3 acres in 2023 for $1.7 million, per the Business Journal.

In total, the property spans almost 5.4 acres and consists of five parcels and six houses, including the main house, four cottages and a new one-bedroom residence. The 12,000-square-foot main house boasts eight bedrooms, five fireplaces, a commercial kitchen with 1,250-bottle wine refrigerator, an outdoor pool, a steam room, a dry sauna and a four-car garage.

If a buyer wants to build more on the property, they’ll be able to take advantage of more than an acre of open, developable land. The Vickerses took the initiative by adding new living structures, landscaping improvements and a water well to the new land. That land is in the process of being entitled to allow for the addition of another primary residence and several accessory dwelling units.

Renovating and creating the Seacliff for sale today was Vickers’ “crowning achievement,” the seller said in a statement, per the Business Journal. The couple bought the property from the estate of world record-holding aviator Steve Fossett.

— Chris Malone Méndez