The Carmel house owned by Clint Eastwood when he served as the Monterey County beach town’s mayor has sold for just over $19.3 million, including commission fees, after coming to market in August for $21 million.
At just 4,442 square feet, the four-bedroom, 4.5-bath home’s price comes to about $4,350 per square foot. The 1920s-era Las Ondas Estate sits on about a quarter of an acre one street off of Carmel Beach.
Tim Allen at Coldwell Banker represented both sides of the deal and said the buyer and seller hit it off after meeting during a home tour and agreed on the sale that included the $18.5-million sale price and the $800,000 commission with a “handshake deal.” There were two other interested parties, he added.
“He could have waited for more offers but sincerely appreciated the buyer’s love for the property,” Allen said.
The buyer was Carmel House LLC, according to property records.
Eastwood lived in the home in the 1980s and 90s, including the two-year stint he served as mayor from 1986 to 1988. He sold the home to retired investor Frederick O’Such in 1996 for about $2.25 million, O’Such told the Wall Street Journal when the home first came to market this summer. By 1998, he had spent another $2.5 million renovating the now-century-old Spanish Revival property. His improvements included a wine cellar in the home’s basement, seismic upgrades, a new roof and windows, and an Arts and Crafts-inspired interior overhaul.
O’Such told the WSJ that he planned to move to a cottage at a nearby retirement community after the sale of the home that he bought with his wife Joanne and lived in as his primary residence, after relocating from Los Altos Hills. Joanne died in 2011, and he later married Nancy Fuhrman, a longtime real estate broker in Monterey County who kept her broker’s license until she died in the home at the age of 84 in March this year, according to her obituary.
Allen said “legacy properties” such as Las Ondas are “irreplaceable” and have a subjective value determined more by intangibles such as view, feel, privacy, and a very particular location, which in this case includes a secret back gate to the beach, than the physical “bricks and mortar.” This buyer appreciated those subjective aspects, as well as the design and quality construction of the home, he said.
This is not the first time Allen has negotiated deals where buyers pay for commissions on ultra luxury homes and he did not link the recent passing of the NAR deadline on agent commissions to the buyer footing the bill for the commissions in this case.
“Commissions have always been negotiable, and it is not uncommon in some more significant transactions that once a price is set, the buyer will agree to pay the commissions to reduce the sales price,” he said.
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