The Wall Street Journal-20080111-WEEKEND JOURNAL- The Home Front- Private Properties
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; The Home Front: Private Properties
Nicolas Cage Sells
For $35 Million
Nicolas Cage sold his Newport Beach, Calif., house last week for $35 million -- a new record for Orange County, local brokers say.
The movie star, who has bought and sold many houses, paid $25 million for the nearly 0.6-acre property in 2005.
The contemporary house on Newport Bay has a view of the harbor's main turning basin. It has a stone loggia with retractable glass doors. The dock, if expanded, could accommodate boats of more than 150 feet. It's next door to the former home of John Wayne. Mr. Cage asked $40 million for the house but never officially put it on the market.
The buyer, 70-year-old Jerry Herbst, is owner, chairman and president of Las Vegas-based Terrible Herbst, which runs gas stations and other retail operations and is known for its "Bad Guy" cowboy logo.
The previous Orange County record is believed to be a north Laguna Beach property that sold in July for just over $30 million.
This past fall, after encountering an intruder within the Newport Beach house, Mr. Cage moved to his walled and gated home in the Los Angeles community of Bel-Air and took that house off the market, a person close to Mr. Cage says. The Bel-Air house, whose owners have included Dean Martin and Tom Jones, had been listed for $35 million. Mr. Cage owns many other properties in the U.S. and abroad.
Local agent Rob Giem of HOM Real Estate Group represented the buyer. James Chalke of Los Angeles-based Nelson Shelton & Associates represented Mr. Cage.
Hilton CEO Nassetta
Pays $27.5 Million
Hilton Hotels Chief Executive Christopher Nassetta has paid about $27.5 million for a California house formerly owned by NFL-team proprietor Georgia Frontiere, a person with knowledge of the deal says.
Ms. Frontiere, who, as owner of the St. Louis Rams is a rare female owner in professional sports, sold the 1.8-acre Bel-Air property in 2005 to an investor group that renovated the 10-bedroom house and put it on sale for $30 million last autumn.
Designed by architect Paul Williams, who designed a major wing of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the 17,700-square-foot home dates to 1931. It is based around a courtyard and has 15 bathrooms. There's an outdoor fireplace, a guest house, an art studio, a wine cellar, a theater room, a tennis court and a pool.
Kurt Rappaport of Westside Estate Agency had the listing. Sotheby's International Realty represented the buyer.
Until this fall, Mr. Nassetta, 45, was the CEO of Bethesda, Md.- based Host Hotels & Resorts, the nation's largest publicly traded hotel owner. In October, Blackstone Group hired him to run Los Angeles-based Hilton, which it had recently acquired.
Spanish Home Owned
By Hitchcock Actress
A house on Spain's Mediterranean coast once owned by Hitchcock film actress Madeleine Carroll is on the market for 10 million euros (about $14.7 million).
The blonde, British-born actress, known for the director's 1935 thriller "The Thirty-Nine Steps," had the home designed as a mix between a castle and a country house in the mid-1930s, according to agent Tom Maidment of Lucas Fox, which has the listing along with Quintessentially Estates.
Located between Palamos and Playa de Aro, two of the many towns on Spain's Costa Brava, the 1.5-acre property features a large landscaped garden, a pool and stairs to the beach. The 9,700-square-foot house has eight bedrooms, beamed ceilings, tiled floors, arched windows and a double-height great hall designed for entertaining.
Ms. Carroll, who also appeared in "The Prisoner of Zenda" among other films, also served as a Red Cross field nurse during World War II after her sister was killed in the German bombing of London. Ms. Carroll died in Marbella, Spain, in 1987, at age 81. The current owner's family bought the house from the actress's estate, Mr. Maidment says.
