The Wall Street Journal-20080215-WEEKEND JOURNAL- The Home Front- Private Properties

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WEEKEND JOURNAL; The Home Front: Private Properties

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Kimmel Home Listed

For $81.5 Million

In Palm Beach, movie producer Sidney Kimmel, the billionaire founder and chairman of Jones Apparel, has put his oceanfront mansion up for sale for $81.5 million.

If the 80-year-old philanthropist gets close to that price, it will set a record for the Florida resort. Mr. Kimmel paid $5.5 million for the roughly five-acre property in 1993. He tore down the existing house and built a more than 30,000-square-foot structure designed by Thierry W. Despont, an architect who's also worked for Bill Gates.

The limestone villa's atrium has six 20-foot-high glass panels that can sink into the ground, opening up the house to the pool and ocean, according to Paulette Koch of Corcoran Group, the listing agent along with her son, Dana. There's a two-bedroom guest house, a five-car garage and two pool cabanas. The property, near the house of Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, has 316 feet on the ocean.

Elsewhere in Palm Beach, a spec house listed at $47 million, with 150 feet on the beach, recently was labeled on its Web site as sold. A $23.5 million waterfront mansion of Howard Gittis, the late takeover specialist and business partner of financier Ronald Perelman, is in contract a month after it was listed. The area record is believed to be the 2005 sale of Mr. Perelman's house for about $70 million.

Mr. Kimmel, a producer of "The Kite Runner" and "Lars and the Real Girl," has donated close to $500 million to cancer research and other causes. In 2007 he and his wife, Caroline, paid $35 million to $40 million for Johnny Carson's Malibu, Calif., home. They also own apartments in Los Angeles and New York.

New York Mansion

Lists for $64 Million

Despite the financial world's turmoil, Manhattan owners are still testing the top of the market.

An investor group has listed a 36-foot-wide townhouse for $64 million, one of the highest asking prices in the city. On East 68th Street near Fifth Avenue, the 18,500-square-foot mansion was built in 1905 by Henry T. Sloane, an heir to a luxury-furnishings emporium. He had it designed by architect C.P.H. Gilbert, responsible for many of New York's turn-of-the-century large-scale townhouses, including the current home of the Jewish Museum. The Sloane house has ceilings of over 17 feet, multiple terraces and original wood paneling. In 1941, it sold for $180,000 to an art dealer.

In 2003, a developer paid $7.6 million for the house, which had been a rental building with nine apartments. In 2007, the investor group paid $39 million for the property, including the cost of relocating its remaining tenants. Townhouse specialist Paula Del Nunzio of Brown Harris Stevens has the listing.

Ozzy Reality Show:

No Sale in Malibu

After nearly two years and $3 million in price cuts, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne have given up trying to sell their Malibu beach house, according to Mrs. Osbourne's publicist. Now, they're trying to rent it.

The home, most recently listed for $11 million (down from an original $14 million in 2006) is available for long-term lease at $37,500 a month or for short-term lease in the summer at $85,000 monthly. There are fireplaces, terraces on all three levels, a walled- in garden and 39 feet on La Costa Beach. Jonah Wilson, of Sotheby's International Realty, is a listing agent.

In May, two years after they listed it, the couple sold the L.A. house that figured in their reality-TV series for $11.5 million to singer Christina Aguilera.