Ozzy's House for Sale; Reduced!

motordavid · #1 06-20-2005, 12:26 PM

For those of you on the Left Coast or Right Coast,
house hunting;
(Jes' use some of the gold bars you have stored on pallets
in your basement!)

Beverly Hills Crop
By TROY MCMULLEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 17, 2005; Page W1

Rock star and reality-show veteran Ozzy Osbourne and his wife, Sharon, have cut the asking price on their Beverly Hills, Calif., home by $1 million to $10.9 million -- one of several recent discounts to multimillion-dollar houses in the area.

Actor Frankie Muniz cut the asking price of his Beverly Hills-area home this month to $3.9 million from $4.6 million. Actress Penélope Cruz recently bought a house there for $3.5 million, nearly $500,000 less than its asking price. Overall, the number of Beverly Hills houses that sold for $3 million or more fell in the first five months of this year to 15, from 25 in the year-earlier period, according to DataQuick, a La Jolla, Calif., real-estate research firm.

Some believe price-cutting at the higher end of the market is a leading indicator for broader weaknesses in home prices -- as happened in 1988, says Gregory Heym, chief economist at Halstead Property, a New York real-estate firm. So does the Beverly Hills discounting portend a broader market shift? Not so fast, Mr. Heym and other economists say: While certain houses in the $4-million-plus range have seen price cuts in markets from New York to Florida, they note the most recent statistics show those markets continue to display high demand overall.

In Manhattan, homes priced at the top 10% of the market (those selling for $2.75 million and above) sold faster -- in an average of 125 days in the first quarter of 2005, compared with 138 days in the year-earlier quarter -- according to New York appraisal firm Miller Samuel Inc. In Palm Beach, Fla., 36 homes priced at $5 million and higher sold during the first quarter, up from 22 a year earlier, town records show.

Real-estate agents have another explanation for the scattered discounts. They say that in hot markets such as Beverly Hills, wealthy owners have set unrealistically high prices. Some agents point to the Osbournes' original price tag as an example of that. Another instance: Former General Electric Co. chief executive Jack Welch cut the price on his Fairfield, Conn., house to $9.5 million last month, the third price drop from its original $13 million.

In a Hurry to Sell

As for the Osbournes, their broker says they are in a hurry to sell because they just bought another home in the area. The house they're selling, a Mediterranean six-bedroom built in 1988, sits on two-thirds of an acre and measures 12,000 square feet, with seven bathrooms, a guest house, pool and spa. The couple bought the home in 1999, and it was heavily featured in their MTV reality series, which ended last year after three seasons. Their new house, a Tuscan-style compound with two dwellings, sits on four acres with a main house that has five bedrooms. The Osbournes are moving because they want more space for their 14 dogs, their publicist says. Joe Babajian and Kyle Grasso of Prudential California in Beverly Hills have the listing.

Yahoo in Motion

Elsewhere in Beverly Hills, Yahoo Inc.'s Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Semel and his wife, Jane, just purchased a home for $8.3 million. Mr. Semel, 62 years old, bought the home from Hollywood producer Roger Birnbaum, who produced such films as "Seabiscuit" and "Rush Hour." (Mr. Semel, a former co-chairman of Warner Bros., joined the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company in 2001.)

The two-story Contemporary, built in 1987 by architect Robert Offenhauser, sits in a gated community on almost three-quarters of an acre. It has four bedrooms and seven baths in 8,800 square feet, as well as a pool, media room and guest house. The Semels also own a home in Bel Air, which they're planning to renovate, and will live in the Beverly Hills home during the construction period. Jonas Heller at Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, represented the buyers.

The purchase comes as Yahoo expands in the Los Angeles area. The company is building a 300,000-square-foot office facility in Burbank and opened a new media division in Santa Monica. Yahoo plans to move its finance, sports, news and other sections from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles this year. Mr. Semel declined to comment.

Home View / For Rent (Please)

Owners planning to rent out their house this summer in some popular beach areas may have to get in line. An unusually chilly May slowed rentals in New England locations, brokers there say. "We've got more supply than demand right now," says Carol Shore, a rental agent with Coldwell Banker Landmarks Real Estate on Martha's Vineyard. Empty beach houses can also be found along the North and South Carolina coastlines. People are waiting later in the year to decide to rent, brokers say. Michael Sarka, executive director of Vacation Rental Managers Association of Santa Cruz, Calif., says the rise in second-home ownership -- up 16% last year -- also seems to be cutting into rentals.

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