Celebrity Style
December 10, 2015
Inside Ellen Degeneres’s Most Star-Studded Homes
If you’re Ellen Degeneres, buying and selling multi-million dollar mansions is just what you do on a Tuesday. But even in Ellen’s rarefied housing history, some deals stand out — the ones where her A-list acquaintances make guest appearances. Read on for the details on six of the comedian/talk show host/design guru’s most star-studded purchases and sales.
Ellen bought this two-property compound for a reported $10 million in 2005, and sold it in 2007. After a string of D-list owners (like frequent Ricky Gervais collaborator Stephen Merchant), Ellen bought it back for $8.75 million in 2014. As of October 2015, Ellen and her wife, Portia de Rossi, were renting out the house to teen idol-turned-solo heartthrob Nick Jonas, who is apparently an excellent tenant.
This compound, which features a 9,200-square-foot main house and three guesthouses, was created out of four parcels of land, which Ellen and Portia started accumulating in 2007. The first was bought from Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick in 2007 for nearly $30 million. Though Ellen and Portia listed the property for $49 million in the fall of 2011, it would eventually go to Ryan Seacrest for a reported $37 million.
Glamour girl interior designer Kelly Wearstler owned this Hal Levitt-designed stunner from 2002 to 2006, before selling to developers Bob Cort and Rosalie Swedlin for $9.9 million. Ellen and Portia bought it in 2012 for somewhere in the neighborhood of $17 million, and promptly undid all of Wearstler’s Hollywood Regency stylings (pictured) in favor of a more restrained aesthetic. The couple sold it in 2014.
Ellen bought The Tree House in 2004 for $1.2 million, but only held onto it for about a year, at which point she sold it to producer David Weissman for $2.1 million. About a year after that, Weissman took a page from her book, selling to a trust associated with actor Heath Ledger. After Ledger’s death it was sold to actor Adrian Bellani, who then sold it to Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson in 2012.
Ellen bought this 4,000-sqaure-foot 1960s beauty, which has four bedrooms, four baths and views to Point Mugu State Park on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, from Brad Pitt in December 2011 for $12 million… Only to sell it six months later for $13 million.
Designed by architect A. Quincy Jones, interior designer Billy Haines and landscape architect Garrett Eckbo for philanthropists Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody in 1949, this Modernist icon is often touted as one of the best houses in L.A. Ellen bought it in January 2014 for almost $40 million, but a few months later, Napster founder Sean Parker came calling and she ended up selling. For $55 million. Nicely done, E.