Ka-Ching! Former Hearst Home Up for Sale for $165,000,000

It’s not San Simeon, but it certainly has seen its share of glitz, celebrity, and enough titillating history to make even Kitty Kelley blush: “It” is this Beverly Hills mansion that was once owned by William Randolph Hearst and actress girlfriend Marion Davies back in 1947 and is being listed for sale for an astounding $165,000,000. Steve Shapiro of the West Side Estate Agency Realtors is handling the sale for owner Leonard M. Ross, who is an attorney-investor who bought the property in 1976, according to this article by the LA Times.

The $165,000,000 price tag is now the highest known price tag for real estate in the U.S., outdoing the $155,000,000 sticker on an estate in Montana’s Big Sky country, and a nice little $135-million gem in Aspen, Colo., which is owned by Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. Yowza. The contrast of the Zestimate with the asking price is obviously very startling since the public record data we have on the mansion seems to only be a fraction of what truly exists. For example, we list 9 bedrooms, 15 baths and 40 total rooms; would you believe the home apparently has 29 bedrooms!? Sounds like the owner needs to create his own estimate. But, for now, what does one get for $165 million?

Here are some of the physical highlights as reported by the LA Times article:

• Six separate residences, spread over 6.5 acres north of Sunset Boulevard.
• Four houses, one apartment and a cottage for security staff.
• Three swimming pools, 29 bedrooms, a state-of-the-art movie theater and a disco.

And a bit of the history (or drama?):

• Built in 1927 and designed by Gordon Kaufmann, who was also the architect of the nearby Greystone mansion, considered to be the finest home in Beverly Hills.
• Hearst bought the home in 1947 for $120,000, moving in with Davies. He filled the mansion with much of the art, sculptures and glitz from the Hearst Castle.
• Hearst and Davies held many parties at the mansion, attended by Hollywood celebs, politicians, and media titans.
• Hearst died at the mansion in 1951 at the age of 88.
• Ten weeks after Hearst’s death, Davies married movie extra Horace Brown and continued the parties.
• John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, spent part of their honeymoon at the estate in 1953, and later returned when the mansion was used as the West Coast headquarters for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
• Davies died in 1961 and Brown subdivided and sold the property in 1966.
• Ross, the current owner, bought it in 1976 and restored the structures, gardens, fountains and bought back some of the subdivided acreage.
• The estate was used in the film “The Godfather,” including for a scene in which a movie producer awakens to find a severed horse’s head in his bed.

What are the chances that this property will sell for this price? Slim to none since no U.S. home has been sold at or above the $100 million mark. The record still remains at $94 million for a Bel-Air estate sold back in 2001.