Six years after it sold for just a hair under $120 million, the colossal Los Angeles home still widely known as Spelling Manor has sold again, this time for a discounted $110 million. The buyer, probably to exactly nobody’s surprise, is multi-billionaire former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, arguably the most prolific collector of trophy properties worldwide.
Spelling Manor’s origins trace to 1983, when the economy was soaring at record highs and the “Dynasty” era was roaring into full swing. That year, television mega-producer Aaron Spelling and his wife Candy bought the former Bing Crosby estate in L.A.’s posh Holmby Hills neighborhood; they almost immediately razed that 1930s house to construct an albatross-shaped, 56,500-square-foot monument to the family’s wealth on its 4.7 acres of land.
Finally completed in the early 1990s, Spelling Manor features 123 rooms, including 14 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms. And yes, as you probably know, there were rooms exclusively devoted to flower-cutting, gift-wrapping and doll-displaying, along with a 7,000-square-foot primary suite so vast that it necessitated including its own kitchen and living room.
During their residency, the Spellings employed a full-time kitchen staff, full-time gardeners and a full-time security team of off-duty LAPD cops to monitor the premises, which back up to the tony Los Angeles Country Club.
Following Aaron Spelling’s 2006 death, Candy put the village-like house up for sale at $150 million. It finally sold in 2011 for “just” $85 million to Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone, who almost immediately spent another $20 million giving the interiors a very contemporary and Euro-chic nightclub sort of renovation, complete with black-and-white marble galore.
Ecclestone and her 30-person staff lived there for nearly a decade, but she ultimately sold the place in 2019 for $120 million to a mysterious Arab billionaire who has never publicly confirmed his ownership but is widely believed to be Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and the owner of the U.K.’s Manchester City football club.
In any case, Sheikh Mansour and his entourage rarely visited the Manor. And by 2022, the place was back on the market with a $165 million price tag, though it took three full years—and a whopping $55 million discount—before Schmidt finally agreed to buy the whole caboodle, adding just another bauble to his world-class collection of trophy properties.
So what happens from here? Schmidt’s publicist told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to use the Manor to throw charitable events and parties with his longtime wife Wendy, which sounds very odd considering the tech billionaire and his wife have publicly lived separate lives for many years—and he currently resides right across the street from Spelling Manor (in a far more “humble” $22 million house) with Michelle Ritter, his longtime girlfriend.
Schmidt, 70, also owns more than two dozen other mansions and properties, including the former Barron Hilton estate elsewhere in Holmby Hills, the vacant Enchanted Hill compound above Beverly Hills, and palatial homes in Montecito, London, Washington D.C. and New York. Whatever your thoughts about the merits of Spelling Manor’s chateau-esque architecture, suffice to say that it will likely remain far less of a home than it is a giant work of high-maintenance art, a collectible asset to be occasionally glimpsed and enjoyed from afar.
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